Chicago - A message from the station manager

Dear Sportswriters: Ditch The Clown Questions

By Nicole Craft/The Conversation

LeBron James had enough.
During the press conference after Game 1 of the 2018 NBA finals, James was questioned repeatedly by ESPN’s Mark Schwartz about the mental state of teammate J.R. Smith, whose final-seconds rebounding blunder contributed to a Cleveland Cavaliers overtime loss.
Over 70 seconds and four questions, Schwartz probed for the inner workings of Smith’s mind, before James finally stood up, put on sunglasses, grabbed his briefcase and walked out through the gathered press corps.
He uttered a single sentence: “Be better tomorrow.”

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Posted on June 30, 2021

Santiago Sunday & The Sox

By Roger Wallenstein

The downpour finally subsided, moving on to the east, and Sunday showed promise. The suspended game from the night before would be resumed before a seven-inning contest to put a capper on the day. A perfect opportunity for the White Sox to get well against a still-developing Seattle Mariner outfit.
So we headed to the ballpark.

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Posted on June 28, 2021

Why Carl Nassib Coming Out Is Such A Big Deal

By John Affleck/The Conversation

The video was short and simple, but for America’s gay community it was a blockbuster event.

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A post shared by Carl Nassib (@carlnassib)


In an Instagram post, Las Vegas Raiders defensive lineman Carl Nassib announced from his yard in West Chester, Pennsylvania, that he’s gay and that, while he’s a private person, he feels “representation is so important.” He added that he would donate $100,000 to the Trevor Project, which offers suicide prevention services to LGBTQ youth.

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Posted on June 24, 2021

Squirrel Strikes

By DIRTcar Racing

LASALLE, IL – It was only a matter of time before the reigning DIRTcar Summer Nationals champion Brian “The Squirrel” Shirley scored his first win of the season.
On Wednesday night at LaSalle Speedway, he did just that, leading all 40 laps green-to-checkered for his 34th career Hell Tour victory. With this win, Shirley has now won the last three tour visits to the quarter-mile oval.

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Posted on June 24, 2021

Forget Houston

By Roger Wallenstein

In case you didn’t notice, the sun did rise again this morning. Thankfully, the rotation of the Earth is far more predictable than the White Sox starting rotation as displayed last weekend in Houston. Judging from some of the reaction on social media, this item requires reinforcement.
The consternation and hand-wringing resulting from the four-game thrashing administered by the Astros should be expected, but let’s be realistic. Had most fans been told prior to the season that on the first day of summer, despite the extended absences of Eloy Jiménez and Luis Robert, the Sox would be 14 games above .500 with a 2½-game lead in the AL Central, back-slapping, high fives, the pouring of another shot likely would have been in order.
It matters not that the team has battered opponents with less than .500 records to the tune of 26-6 while going 17-23 against the stouter fellows. A win is a win, no matter if it’s by a run – the Sox are 8-9 in those nail-biters – or a blowout of at least five runs in which the Sox are 14-5.

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Posted on June 21, 2021

Kids Who Get Hit In The Head Playing Football Show Brain Changes

By The Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center

With preseason football training on the horizon, a new study shows that head impacts experienced during practice are associated with changes in brain imaging of young players over multiple seasons.
The research, conducted by scientists at Wake Forest School of Medicine and the University of Texas Southwestern, is published in the June 15 issue of the Journal of Neurosurgery: Pediatrics.
“Although we need more studies to fully understand what the measured changes mean, from a public health perspective, it is motivation to further reduce head impact drills used during practice in youth football,” said the study’s corresponding author Jill Urban, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Wake Forest School of Medicine.

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Posted on June 16, 2021

Next Team Up

By Roger Wallenstein

This “next man up” might not be so much hooey after all. At least not yet.
But what’s Tony La Russa, Rick Hahn, and the minions in the dugout supposed to say about the staggering injuries that this year’s edition of the White Sox have endured? We heard the mantra once again last Wednesday when second baseman Nick Madrigal suffered a proximal tear of his right hamstring trying to beat out a slow grounder to third base. The Sox wound up losing the game 6-2 to Toronto, the team’s only loss of the week. Madrigal had been on a roll recently, raising his batting average to .305 while 16 of his 61 hits have gone for extra bases. In the previous nine games, Nick was slashing a rousing .353/.389/.948 with a home run and six RBIs. Clearly his loss would hurt.
But not so fast. The team hasn’t been beaten since Nick went down. Danny Mendick and Leury García will be the replacements for the foreseeable future, and beginning with Thursday’s 5-2 victory over the Blue Jays prior to the weekend’s three-game sweep of the Tigers in Detroit, that duo has combined for five hits, four walks, three RBIs, a two-base hit, and an on-base percentage of .529. Mendick also made a superb play on Friday, cradling a hard ground ball behind second base for the final out in the bottom of the tenth inning, preserving a 5-4 Sox win.

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Posted on June 14, 2021

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