By Steve Rhodes
1. The moonwalk.
2. Billy Mays’ best work was for ESPN.
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3. Honduras military coup.
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4. All goals.
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5. How did word get out that Lou Piniella called Milton Bradley “a piece of shit” in their locker room showdown on Friday night?
Some reports have pointed to a leak from a White Sox clubbie. Others vehemently deny that.
“In the Cubs’ defense, the ‘leak’ conspiracy was being pushed by a Chicago Tribune reporter smarting over getting beat,” the Sun-Times’s Chris DeLuca writes today.
DeLuca also reports that Ozzie Guillen “took the Trib reporter to task for spreading rumors.”
Mark Gonzales of the Tribune reports today that “The Cubs were told by a reporter the leak did not come from their organization, and the Sox issued a statement absolving themselves of snitching.”
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Reporters shouldn’t be in the business of telling anyone where leaks didn’t come from any more than telling anyone where leaks did come from. All that does is help narrow the field and, in some cases, out the source. Bad form.
6. “Now, perhaps my view of the Cubs’ condition is not as fully-formed as most people’s,” writes our very own Andrew Reilly. “Perhaps there are things I don’t know. Perhaps in the National League, a leadoff hitter with a .300 on-base percentage is a good thing. Perhaps Kosuke Fukudome’s .260 average really is a major improvement over last year. Perhaps Ted Lilly was actually a great pitcher all along, even while he more closely resembled a terrible pitcher all those years.
“But it’s hard not to look at the Cubs and ask how anybody in their right mind ever saw this year’s team as having a shot (this writer included).”
7. “During the TV broadcast of the Sox/Cubs game on Sunday the Hawkeroo made a comment to Steve Stone about how Hawk admires the fire-e-ness (or something like that) of Big Z,” our very own Marty Gangler writes. “To which Stoney said something like, ‘You’re an idiot.’ Actually Steve Stone said something close to ‘Well, if you want to average just 14 wins a season with the best stuff in the league, then by all means you can like his attitude.’ I miss Steve Stone and his ‘you have no idea what you are talking about’ tone of voice. Put it on the board . . . no.”
8. “The typical Chicago public school loses more than half of all its teachers within five years – and about two-thirds of its new ones, a study released today by the University of Chicago indicates,” the Sun-Times reports.
“Teacher churning is especially severe in high-poverty, heavily African-American schools – about a hundred total – where half of all teachers disappear after only three years, the study found.”
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“Schools with the highest turnover tend to be among the worst performers, creating a vicious cycle that continues to hurt the school, the study shows,” the Tribune reports. “Teachers leave because of a poor school climate and poor performance; in turn, both climate and performance suffer when turnover is a high.”
9.
I crave release
from the heft
of dreams, from the cruel
realities of
desire
– Carnivale
10. “Lawmakers return once again to the capitol in Springfield today in yet another attempt to piece together a budget that is sure to result in still more posturing, phony outrage, slick manuevers, influence-peddling and favor-trading.
“Business as usual in Illinois is back in session.”
11. The Olympic Village Gamble.
12. Ed Burke’s Client Conflict.
13. “[I]n the middle of the day on a big summer baseball weekend (featuring Cubs versus Sox at the same time for goodness sake), the crowd at an average sports bar was captivated by a soccer game.”
– Jim Coffman, SportsMonday
14. “Next in line is real-estate guy John Beck, who almost certainly has a program (and beware of anyone who says you’re buying a ‘program’) to make you rich beyond your wildest dreams – as long as those dreams are considerably more complicated than buying the entire far southern suburbs by doing anything more than just walking into the Ford Heights village clerk’s office and announcing, “Look, I’ll take the whole mess off your hands for five hundred bucks.”
– Scott Buckner, What I Watched Last Night: Infomercial Armageddon
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The Beachwood Tip Line: Release.
Posted on June 29, 2009