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SportsMonday: The Best Part Of The Bears Game

By Jim Coffman

In one way, the Bears game on Sunday worked out perfectly. For all intents and purposes it was over by the time the Cubs contest started further down the dial.
I’m not going to join the mob baying for a change at quarterback. Does anyone really believe Mitch Trubisky will have a legitimate shot at success this season with the roster general manager Ryan Pace has put together for the Bears? He will not. And that is definitely enough about that monstrosity of a football game.
But I will join a much better kind of mob: the one raucously celebrating the Cubs pulling out another win and burying the Cardinals once and for all in 2017. It was a great weekend of baseball capped off by the team hanging on by the tips of their breaking-ball spinning fingernails to win 4-3 on Sunday. How close was this to a loss? It was a close as giving up two hits and two walks, but no runs, in an eighth inning. It was as close as a fly ball to deepest center with the tying run on base . . . caught on the warning track. But the Cubs pulled it out to take a six-game lead on the Cards with 13 to play.

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Posted on September 18, 2017

Ending Up

By Roger Wallenstein

The pennant races have ended. The Dodgers, Cubs, Nationals, Astros, Red Sox and Indians have either clinched or are confidently in command of their respective divisions with two weeks to go in the 2017 baseball season.
There is just one more wild card playoff spot to be determined – between the Twins, 103-game losers just a year ago, and the Angels.
What with the NFL season underway and the Blackhawks skating to get in shape for the 2017-18 campaign, why would anyone continue to keep an eye on baseball?
Until they got beat 4-3 in Kansas City last Friday night, the Cleveland Indians certainly were in the national spotlight as they ran up 22 straight victories. But few noticed that the Tribe ran off two more wins over the weekend to make it 24 out of 25 to clinch the Central Division. Can they top the Astros for the league’s best record? Maybe so, but outside of Cleveland and Houston, who cares?

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Posted on September 18, 2017

TrackNotes: The Immortal Penny Chenery

By Thomas Chambers

And then, on a beautiful Sunday, you get punched in the stomach.
Penny Chenery, the owner and elegant human representative of the magnificent Secretariat, passed away Saturday in Boulder, Colorado. She was 95. But immortal to me.
I learned a few new things about her today. Including an affair she had with Secretariat’s trainer, Lucien Laurin.
But her always honest reflections taught us once more.

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Posted on September 18, 2017

Dem Group Files Ethics Complaint Against Sarah Huckabee Sanders For Calling On ESPN To Fire Jemele Hill

By The Democratic Coalition

New York, NY – The Democratic Coalition announced today that it has filed an ethics complaint against White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders with the Office of Government Ethics for her comments calling on ESPN host Jemele Hill to be fired.
The group cited Sanders’ possible violation of federal law which makes it a crime for a government employee to influence “a private entity’s employment . . . solely on the basis of partisan political affiliation.”

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Posted on September 16, 2017

Amateur Doping

By Kyle J.D. Mulrooney and Katinka van de Ven/The Conversation

The 11th annual CrossFit Games took place last month.
While the event has come a long way from humble beginnings, the prize money and fame now attached to it have led to concerns that competitors may be doping to gain an unfair advantage.

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Posted on September 12, 2017

Streaks

By Roger Wallenstein

It was a record-setting week for the White Sox. Holy Cow! Hey Hey! You can put it on the board, yes!
Let’s hope a couple of years from now we’re celebrating for much different reasons, like a division championship or a pennant win. At the present time we’ll have to be diverted by the role the Sox played last week in helping the Cleveland Indians to four victories in their current 18-game winning streak.
For less tongue-in-cheek plaudits, how about Jose Abreu hitting for the cycle last Saturday, just the sixth player in White Sox history to do so?

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Posted on September 11, 2017

SportsMonday: Bears Don’t Totally Suck

By Jim Coffman

Opportunity blown.
But the dream is still alive. That would be the one where the Bears record five or more wins this season.
It’s the dream because I said it was of course, in my preview last week. At least I said that winning five games was about as good as the Bears could hope to do in the coming campaign.
The team played well and had a great chance to win on Sunday. They failed to take advantage and in the end, the main thing people will remember was that the game was simply a 23-17 loss to the Falcons. Not a shocker.

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Posted on September 11, 2017

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