I know that it is natural as one gets older to have people die who are your age or younger than you are, but it seems unreal somehow, which is how the death of San Diego Padres’ Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn struck me at first. He was born in 1960, same as I, and I always joked that I loved Gwynn because even late in his career when he had gained some weight around the middle, he could still scorch a baseball. As I’ve said here before, we heavy guys have to root for other big guys doing great things athletically.
But it is sad to report Gwynn’s death. His career on the field was well documented: Gwynn spent 20 years in the big leagues, all of them with the Padres, and ended his career in 2001 with 3,141 hits, a .338 batting average and an incredible 790-434 walk-to-strikeout total in 9,288 at-bats. Gwynn is tied with Honus Wagner for the second-most batting titles with eight in his career. He won three straight from 1987 to 1989 and four straight from 1994 to 1997. His .394 average in 1994 is the closest anyone has come to breaking the .400 barrier since Ted Williams did it in 1941. Quite simply, he was one of the best hitters I’ve ever seen. That list would include Rod Carew, George Brett, Frank Thomas, and Wade Boggs.
In fact, Gwynn was such a student of hitting and the game that he and the Splendid Splinter became good friends before Williams died. This also made Gwynn an excellent analyst, and his positive personality and infectious laugh made a viewer feel like one knew him. Gwynn was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame with Cal Ripken in 2007, and went on to coach his alma mater, San Diego State, from 2003 until his death. In fact, the stadium at SDSU is named after him. Gwynn’s son Tony Jr. is a player in his eighth professional season.
Gwynn was first diagnosed with cancer of a salivary gland in 2010. He missed a lot of time in the dugout for San Diego State this season going through cancer. Reportedly, Gwynn blamed smokeless tobacco, or chaw, for his cancer and if so, what a waste. When I worked at the Chicago ballparks, at the end of the game on the field, you could see the empty and half filled bags of chewing tobacco – it smelled horrible and looked like you were eating death. Then there was the black spit that the guys emit all over the place. Some of the Andy Frain supervisors would get the bags that had any tobacco left and chew on it. Then there were the stories of the mouth and throat cancers that high school and college aged players had developed, and now, we are hearing stories warning people to make sure and not touch the nicotine liquid that goes into e-cigarettes. It’s bad stuff.
Of course, I think 54 is too young to die, and maybe there’s one more positive message left from Tony Gwynn to young ballplayers – stay away from smokeless tobacco.

When I convinced the Indignant Wife to move to the Chicago area, there was one place I knew we would not be living: my folks’ house in Englewood. It was the only home I had even known until college (and some time afterwards), and it had chicken wire on the 1st floor windows and iron gates on the doors.
We had few attempted break-ins over the years: someone tried to come in a window and our dogs barking chased them away; we had several times when the detached garage was broken into and we had some stuff stolen (but never a car). The Indignant Wife is tough, but she never faced anything like Englewood; we lived in the South Loop for years, but we did go down to the house when my grandmother and mother were still alive. When they each passed, we went back less and less, finally selling the house in 2004.
When Indignant Daughter #1 was coming, we knew we needed more room, and we liked the North Shore and after lots of looking, we settled in our house. We love Skokie – it is VERY ethnically diverse, the schools are good, we have great neighbors on a great block. For awhile there, after moving, I realized something I had been carrying for decades: fear. When I lived near Englewood High School, there was always a chance at a stray bullet, someone confronting me for money or in some gang situation. Mostly, it was the fear that someone would come in the house to steal or worse.
But, like a very low buzzing, I was used to it. I lived with it for so long, I didn’t even notice it; it was just part of living in that environment. I held onto it even after moving downtown, and then with me to Skokie. Making sure the doors are locked, keeping an eye on people I did not recognize. Over time, however, I noticed that constant vigilance subsiding. Now, Skokie is far from crime proof, and our doors are always locked. But the constant fear and dread which was at 13 on a scale of 1 to 10 when I was on the South Side, is like a 3 now.
As most people know who live in Chicago, Englewood has gotten even worse. Demolition of the projects meant that many of these people were funneled into Englewood. Houses that were selling for $70,000 to $90,000 are now going for $12,000 or less. Violence, which has always plagued the neighborhood, is even worse as there are more players fighting over the lucrative drug profits. When they were younger, I used to bring the Indignant Daughter #1 down to see the old neighborhood, but we haven’t been back since we got Indignant Daughter #2 baptized at my Grandmother’s church. But my family was safer.
And the Indignant Girls are safer, relatively, but like many parents, Sandy Hook changed everything. One of the worse side effects for me of being a parent are the stories that you hear of abused and murdered children and you look at your kids and try not to imagine something happening to them. The mass shooting of kids 18 months ago made me sad; deep down in the soul sad. The School Districts upped the ante on school access and police patrols and all the rest and I think that they are generally effective, but if someone wants to get in, they are going to get in, unfortunately.
Like so many other people, I expected that some strengthening of gun control laws would follow Sandy Hook. President Obama made a push; Vice President Biden was to lead the effort. Surely something would get done despite the Republican Congress’ sole agenda to thwart anything the African-American president tried to do.
Unfortunately, the NRA was too strong and nothing has been done, and every day, that secret fear I had in Englewood makes its way back into the recesses of my mind. Just one crazy person could take either or both of my girls away and there’s nothing I can do about it except keep them hermetically sealed in our house, which is not appropriate. If I had my way, I would be the gun owners’ worst nightmare – I would wish to ban all guns, but that isn’t possible, so I would settle for basic background checks, prohibitions of mentally impaired people getting guns, and prohibitions on semi-automatic weapons and multi shot magazines.
That’s too much for the penis-size-challenged NRA radicals and those even more radical than the NRA. To them, all other rights fall behind their right to own guns, even the right not to be shot and the right to try to live. The goofball brought to prominence by John McCain in his 2008 Presidential campaign called Joe the Plumber said last week that while he was sad about kids getting shot, that didn’t trump his right to own guns. Moreover, some groups are taking to bringing their long arms into restaurants; flaunting their rights to carry arms. Of course, rather than having people support their cause, people in the restaurants are scared for themselves and their families when they see one or more men carrying semi-automatic rifles into a public place. In this way, it gives these guys a connection with being a black man – you know that you aren’t harmless, but that is not necessarily the picture in other people’s minds. (It happens to me all the time.) Several restaurant chains have told these yahoos that they and their long rifles are not welcome in their locations.
What has brought me to write today is a scary statistic. Earlier this week, a student was killed by another student in Troutdale, Oregon who later killed himself. What is saddest about this is that this is the 74th school shooting since the December 14, 2013 Newtown shooting. Since the average school year lasts approximately 180 days, since Newtown there have been 270 school days, or 54 weeks of school, leading to a ratio of 1.37 school shootings per week.
One school shooting per week! How many kids have died in these attacks? Most of the incidents have occurred in K-12th grade schools with most of the rest occurring at colleges and universities. Yes, there are thousands of schools in the country and if I wanted, I could probably ask the Indignant Wife (who is an actuary) to calculate the probability that my girls’ schools would have an incident, but I don’t want to drive us both crazy. I would guess that the probability is in the thousands to one, or perhaps even millions to one, but if the probability isn’t measured in scientific notation in the billions to one, it’s too damn high.

An Unintended Consequence

Another issue that has come to the fore over the past few months has been states like Florida with “stand your ground” legislation. In other words, the law allows a person to use deadly force if they feel threatened by another person. The most controversial instance involved the acquittal of George Zimmerman for killing Trayvon Martin who was unarmed.
My first point regards the guys carrying guns. If they walk into a restaurant and a customer is threatened by these men carrying guns, do they have the right to kill them? Of course, the men carrying the guns “know” that they are mostly harmless, they just want to take their loved ones (the guns) out for a walk. Unfortunately, this isn’t what is being communicated – after the Colorado movie theater shooting and the other slaughters, perhaps people seeing someone with a semi-automatic weapon sure would threaten me.
Second, I admit that when we first moved to Skokie, I constantly thought about the late Northwestern men’s basketball coach Ricky Birdsong. He was taking a walk with his children when an angry white supremacist was hunting. He shot Birdsong in front of his children and he died. I know that this was an isolated incident, but occasionally, when I’m walking home from the bus, could I be a target of someone who’s having a bad day?
Worse, I am a large black man. Could I, walking toward someone, cause a timid person to be threatened? Threatened enough to kill? Of course, Illinois does not have a stand your ground law, but what if I’m in Florida? Should I save time and just wear a bulls-eye on my chest?

Patriots? Hell No!

These man-children who need their guns say that they need them to protect themselves from the government. Of course, this was less of a concern when the chief executive was a white man for the first 232 years of the United States’ existence. Now, with this socialist, Fascist, non-white, secret Muslim, in the White House, sedition is not only allowed by flaunted publicly. (Of course, it would be nearly impossible to be a Fascist and a socialist at the same time, but like the line in Animal House “leave him alone, he’s rolling.”)
These few man-children like the idiots at the Bundy ranch are going to overthrow the country? Un-f$%^king-likely! First, they would have to get the armed forces on their side, which wont happen because 1) the military chain-of-command, unless leading the coup, would tell the soldiers to fight the enemy, and who has better weapons and better training on those weapons than the military. The second and most important factor is: who do they think make up the military – as of 2013 almost 25% of all military forces are minorities. Do these “patriots” think that 357 thousand of the 1.4 million active military are going to fight with them? And will they suddenly get all of the white 1.1 million military people to help them in what is essentially, a race war?

Anyway, I left Englewood to get my family and I away from violence, and generally, that has worked, but while there are no guarantees in life, the gun nuts of this country make me feel less safe than I should feel. And no one in Congress, especially after the Tea Party putz in Virginia defeated Eric Cantor yesterday and Cantor was not exactly full of common sense himself, is going to do anything to stem the tide of gun violence… again.
It reminds me of a line from the film “Jaws” – Richard Dreyfus tells the mayor of Amity Island that “you are going to ignore this particular problem until it swims up and bite you on the ass.” Until one of them is confronted by a gun, or a loved one is shot, they aren’t going to do anything, and based on the money flowing from the NRA font, they never will.

If I were ruler of the world, I would make every politician from all over the world sit down and watch a segment from the most recent HBO show “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel.” Like most other shows of its ilk, some stories are much better than others, but with the World Cup starting this week in Brazil, the story on Brazil’s Cup spending and ultimately, the Olympics is eye opening.
The episode called “White Elephants” shows the millions of dollars being spent on the World Cup and Olympics while millions of people go hungry. This is the “dirty little secret” that no one from FIFA, the international soccer organization, or the International Olympic Committee talk about – once you’ve bribed, I mean earned the right to host the events, does the money ever arrive as promised, and more important, what happens to the stadiums once the event is over?
The local politicians interviewed for the piece all talk about the tourist revenue, and the positive light shown on the host country. However, FIFA gets all of the ticket revenue, gets all of the souvenir money; all of the concession money. What do the Brazilians get? Any crumbs that FIFA decides to share (and FIFA is under scrutiny for corruption). Any guess on how much that will be?
However, many of the people of Brazil are not going along with the sham. Protests, including riots, labor strife and wildcat strikes are going on throughout the country, and while many Brazilians are soccer mad and rooting for their team, the huge stadiums that have been built in light of the abject poverty has made people angry.
The simple fact is that Olympics and World Cups are not profitable for the host cities; I believe the only one in recent years to break even was Los Angeles in 1980, and the piece takes a look at numerous Olympic locations that have never been used after the 2-3 week party and sit abandoned – like set pieces in post-apocalyptic movies and television shows like “The Walking Dead.” This is the point I was making a few years ago when Aon’s Pat Ryan, then Mayor Richard M. Daley and Oprah tried to get the Olympics for Chicago. It’s too costly for a two week party in which we never make our money back.
I think there is no question that the economics of World Cups and the Olympics have to change. The return on investment of the cities, television networks and others doesn’t merit the huge payments to the IOC and FIFA, especially since both the IOC and FIFA are fraught with corruption, patronage, and bribery. That doesn’t even include the problem of the white elephants. In some locations, these may get reused, but in the story, they focus on big new stadium in Manaus, a small town not near anywhere. It is so remote, that there is one road to the next large city. But the politician interviewed talked about enticing foreign investment to Brazil, especially to places like Manaus, but honestly, millions of dollars would have to be spent just to get infrastructure to the place. It’s not on a coast; it is in the middle of the rain forest. What industry is going to come to Manaus?
Meanwhile, people are shown with no jobs, bad schools, a need for better conditions that will not be helped by a big new stadium. And how many games are scheduled for the $300 million stadium? I think that there’s only one game scheduled. Imagine spending $300 million for one game.
With problems of global income inequality, climate change, global poverty, treatment of women around the world, there’s many more important things that we should be spending billions of dollars on. I love sports, but the time of billion dollar bread and circuses is over.

I love the Chicago Blackhawks; I have for as long as I can remember (which is a long time). I have bobbleheads, championship banners and two replica Stanley Cups in my cubicle at work. I have numerous hats, jackets and even a piece of a goal net from the 2010 Championship. I have replicas of both championship rings.
In short, I am a huge fan.
I was disappointed by the team’s loss in Game 7 of the Western Conference Championship series, but coworkers and friends have been coming up to me giving me their condolences. Thanks to you all, but that’s enough. The team lost a hockey series, and the summer truly begins for Chicago sports fans. However, it’s not like someone died!
As I wrote earlier this week, I don’t remember the Hawks winning the Stanley Cup in 1961 – I was 1 ½ years old at the time. In the decades thereafter, we saw all of the Chicago sports teams languish in insignificance. The Cubs, Sox, and Bulls were mediocre at best. The Hawks made the playoffs every year, in part for being mediocre most years and due to the fact that the overwhelming majority of teams made the postseason in those days.
However, every day has his day; even a broken clock is right twice per day; add your own cliché here. We got to see some championship teams. It started with the Bears’ Super Bowl Shuffle team in 1985. Since Chicago is a Bears town, always has been and always will be, that team will always be the town’s favorite. Ditka, McMahon, Payton, William “The Refrigerator” Perry, all of the great players and characters live on even as the players get old, die, or suffer from brain injuries, but beloved they will always be.
Then came this force of basketball nature called Michael Jordan. His skill and athleticism on the basketball court was only enhanced by his unremitting drive to win. Type A doesn’t describe Jordan’s will to win at anything. The six championships made the usually pessimistic Chicago fans actually expecting titles from the Bulls. Those Bulls had their share of characters too: the Zen Master, Pippen, Horace Grant for one half of the run, and of course, Dennis Rodman for the final three titles. The NBA record 72-10 regular season result in 1995-1996 is likely one that will never be broken (counting the playoffs that year, the Bulls went 87-13).
Even my alma mater Northwestern went to several bowl games including the Rose Bowl in January, 1996. A couple of years ago, they even won one.
For White Sox fans the 2005 season was magical – the team’s first World Series title in 88 years. On the North Side, even the Cubs showed signs of life with three playoff appearances – no World Series appearances, but they did make the playoffs even though the present doesn’t look to promising on the field, in the stands that need repair, or in revenues with a pending fight with the city and the nearby rooftop bar owners.
In the 200s, the Blackhawks were dead in the water. Dollar Bill Wirtz’s refusal to bring the club into the 21st Century led to horrible hockey and no hope. The team couldn’t even give tickets away (I refused them, not willing to give Wirtz any money for peripheral stuff like parking and concessions). It became a “bucket list” thing for me. I just wanted to see a Stanley Cup championship, and in 2010, I did and the town went nuts.
Bucket list item accomplished, right? Then they came back and won again last season. It was just as sweet as 2010. This season, upstarts from Colorado and St. Louis eclipsed us in the standings, but not by much, and we were in the playoffs again, Tough series from the Blues, and the Wild led to the series of a lifetime against Los Angeles. Down 3 games to 1, they could have packed it in, but they didn’t fighting back to force game 7, a game they could have won with two leads and numerous wasted scoring opportunities.
So, it’s over for this season. As I wrote a couple of days ago, I thought that they ran out of gas from the short 2012-2013 season, long playoff run that didn’t end until nearly July, short offseason, full season interrupted by the Olympics, finished with injuries to their two top players Toews and Kane. That’s a lot of hockey, and it is amazing to me that they reached the conference finals and came one goal from continuing the chance to repeat.
I am going to watch the Stanley Cup Finals. I want the Kings to win because they knocked the Hawks out and because first, the Rangers are from New York, and anything that denies them any bragging rights is a good thing. Plus, while I appreciate the talents of Martin St. Louis and goaltender Henrik Lundqvist, the Rangers have Rick Nash, who I never liked in Columbus and he has been a nonfactor in New York. Nash is a big man who can score, but he always seemed slow on the ice and relatively uninterested. Being traded hasn’t exactly enlivened his career. He could be the worst “star” to win a Stanley Cup if the Rangers do it.
The Blackhawks will be back. Already Coach Quennville talked about the loss being one fot he toughest for him. “Captain Serious” Toews talked about the quest for next year’s Cup beginning now. The front office says that it’s primary goal is negotiating extensions for Toews and Kane. There are some very talented young, hungry players waiting to step in. The future is bright.
In short, I appreciate your sympathy, but the future for the Blackhawks is very bright. Let’s use our sympathy on the needy, the poor, the veterans, the shooting victims and their families. Even if the Hawks future wasn’t so bright, that’s a better use for our empathy and sympathy than losing a hockey series, isn’t it?

Well, the 2013-2014 hockey season is over here in Chicago. The Los Angeles Kings won game 7 last night at the United Center 5-4 in overtime, which is the appropriate way this series should have ended. The Blackhawks went up 1 game to 0 then lost three straight, then fought back to tie the series and the Kings prevailed.
As the resident top Hawks fan in my neighborhood and at work, people have been giving me condolences, but I have not really accepted them. I was 1 ½ years old when Bobby Hull, Stan Mikita and company won the Cup and we waited 49 years for another one. Then this remarkable team won again last year in a salary cap landscape that made keeping your players more difficult than ever.
Let’s face it, winning the Stanley Cup is the hardest feat in sports. There’s the regular season and then four grueling rounds to survive in order the hoist sport’s oldest trophy. Repeating is more difficult which is why it has not been done since the 1997 and 1998 Detroit Red Wings. No insult meant to those teams, but from a business perspective, it was easier if you had a deep pockets owner like Mike Illych willing to outspend to get the best free agents and keep his nucleus together. It’s harder now.
Honestly, I think the entire team “hit the wall.” With last season starting late and therefore finishing nearly in July due to the lockout, the champions had a very short off season, then a full 82 game schedule and the Olympics. They were a step slower than usual and it showed in a very tough series with Minnesota then facing the former champion Kings. I think it was quite an accomplishment to even reach the conference finals, but that shows the talent, grit and drive of this team.
That is not an excuse, the Kings were the better team in this series and I think they will win the Cup again. But, for those of you casual Blackhawk fans and bandwagon jumpers who are ready to jump back off, both Captain Jonathan Toews and Coach Joel Quennville talked about how tough this loss was and Toews spoke that the drive to win the Cup next year begins today. These guys have fire in their bellies, and with a still young and talented nucleus, the future is bright.
Thanks guys – see you in the Fall.

If all of the antics that occurred this weekend are true, every owner of a sports franchise should thank former Clippers owner and present day pariah Donald Sterling if not give him a big kiss. For those who weren’t paying attention, former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has reportedly come to an agreement to buy Sterling’s Clippers for $2 billion.
Forbes annual valuation of sports franchises had the Clippers valued at $550 million and the most valuable franchise were the Dallas Cowboys and $2.3 billion and Cowboys owner Jerry Jones owns his own stadium. Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban estimated that the Clippers were worth $1.3 billion, but Ballmer, who tried to buy the Milwaukee Bucks and move them to his native hometown Seattle, over paid by $500 million just to eliminate competitive bids.
Just like baseball owners did by overpaying for talent, the rising sea lifts all boats, and this week, every sports franchise is marked against the Clippers. What are the Cowboys worth now? Four billion? What about your favorite team?
Two more points to be made: first Ballmer says that he does not plan to move the Clippers to Seattle. Of course not – he has a very good, young team in the second largest market in the country. The Clippers are now more popular than the rival Lakers, so moving them would be foolish in the extreme.
Finally, the title of this blog says “love/hate relationship,” and all I’ve talked about is love of money. NBA Owners however may also feel the hate for Sterling. Sterling has reportedly filed a $1 billion lawsuit against the league for wresting the team away from him despite the fact that Ballmer’s $2 billion is all coming to him and estranged wife Shelly (who reportedly was involved in negotiating the Ballmer deal). Donald Sterling has always been an underhanded character and mostly it seems that billionaires don’t like to be told what to do, so Sterling, who reportedly “loves” the league and his “partners” in ownership, are willing to sue them.
The Owners and the league would much prefer Sterling slink back under the rock he crawled out from under, but if he goes through with the suit, much dirt on the other owners in the form of racist and inappropriate language could come out in open court. As disgusting as Sterling’s comments were, how many owners, in fact, how many of us, have said things that we are glad aren’t public?
As I’ve written here before however, Donald Sterling isn’t being run out of the NBA on the basis of this comment, it’s his long record of actions as a landlord and in other business dealings that have been an open secret to the league and the media for decades that got him banned. The question now is, will Sterling try to bring other owners down with him?

One of the positives about sport is that there’s always a winner and a loser, but in the case of the Chicago Cubs versus the rooftop owners that sell tickets to watch games over the left and right field walls, neither side deserves to win. They belong to each other.
For those of you not keeping up with this, people have been watching games from these rooftops for decades, and around 20 years ago or so, owners built formal structures that looked like additions to the park, and they sold tickets and food and drinks, and the Cubs weren’t getting any revenue from it. The Cubs sued and the team and the rooftop owners settled with the rooftops giving approximately 18% of revenues to the team. It was a pittance compared with the ticket revenues, but something is better than nothing. And this contract extends through 2023.
In come the Ricketts family owning the Cubs, and besides the structural improvements necessary just to keep the 100-year-old park from falling down, everyone agrees that the Cubs need more revenue including more signage and the ability to close streets around the park to sell more food and drink and souvenirs, but the rooftop owners have taken a lot of their profits and funneled them to Alderman Tom Tunney who now seems willing to defend the rooftops to his dying breath. The city has to be involved because Wrigley Field is a national historic landmark, so any changes have to be approved by the government (not just under building permits and zoning and other rules).
There have been deals cut and refused, mostly over large jumbo-tron scoreboards that would obstruct the rooftop bars. Last week, Ricketts announced that the team would just go back to its original plans and the rooftops be damned. The team says that they want to begin construction in July under a codicil in the rooftop contract that says that the rooftop owners have no say in any stadium construction agreed upon by the team and the city/landmarks committee.
Mayor Rahm Emmanuel, up for election early next year and who may be the first elected mayor to be voted out after one term in decades, is in the middle. On the one hand, the Ricketts are rich and powerful owners of the Cubs; on the other hand, the mayor risks ticking off even more people.
The Ricketts family knew what they were getting into and perhaps used too much debt to buy the team, and so the revenue streams are needed more than ever, especially since people don’t flock to watch the miserable Cubs anymore. It truly is a whirlwind – the baseball operation headed by Theo Epstein appears to be impatient with the amount of money he has been given to try and turn the franchise around, but the team can’t generate additional revenues because of the crappy deal the Tribune Company made with the rooftops. The team can’t even start on any renovation without the permission of the city and the local alderman is in the rooftop owners’ pockets and this unilateral action puts the mayor behind the 8-ball.
It is truly a mess, and even if the city gives the team the go-ahead, the rooftop owners are a litigious bunch and will sue in a heartbeat. Meanwhile, the Cubs are posting the worst record in the majors and fans are no longer paying the third highest ticket price in the majors just to spend a nice day outside. Some writers have suggested that the Ricketts buy the rooftop buildings and then they can do what they want, but will the owners of those buildings go along with it?
This is going to be a long protracted fight. I just wonder if Epstein will stay around long enough to continue trying to build a winning team under these circumstances?