It is hard to think that former NBA star with the Chicago Bulls, Orlando Woolridge is the same age as I am. Maybe it was all the money. I worked at the old Chicago Stadium for Andy Frain, some of those stories have made their way to this page.
But, to quote The Bard, “I knew him Horatio.” Woolridge died at his parents’ home in Mansfield, La. yesterday. Like yours truly, he was 52. I had read somewhere that he had been under hospice care for a chronic heart condition, but it didn’t register with me until today when it was announced that he died.
Woolridge was a star on the team when I worked on the main floor for Bulls games, and while I can’t say I socialized with him outside of the old barn on Madison Street, I did hang out with him a bit inside of it. He was funny, and intelligent, as you would expect of someone who had gone to Notre Dame (I hate their teams, alumni and fans, but I give them props on their academics).
Many of the players at that time, would give kids their old game worn shoes, and for a long time, I wore Woldridge’s Nikes, and Ronnie Lester’s shoes. Woolridge played for the Bulls, Los Angeles Lakers, New Jersey, Philadelphia and Detroit, and also coached the Los Angeles Sparks of the WNBA; averaging 16.0 points, 4.3 rebounds, 1.9 assists and 28.3 minutes in 851 games.
Of course, I never saw Orlando Woolridge again after I stopped working basketball games, and I’m sure he probably wouldn’t have remembered me. I also don’t know what affect playing basketball had on his shortened life.
But I do think fondly of those days when Orlando Woolridge soared above the rim, dunking over many players.

I have seen sports riots and hooliganism for almost every sport on earth, and soccer hooliganism is amongst the worst, with huge fights, injuries and even deaths attributed to fans of the sport. And I realize that some fans are way over the line with their enthusiasm, but I’ve seen nothing like this.
Fans of Argentinean soccer club Armed Racing Club in a car pulled in front of the car in which Giovani Moreno and Federico Santander were in when they were leaving Racing Club’s training ground and forced them to stop. According to Santander, two men got out and threatened Moreno with a gun. “They told Gio they would shoot him in the legs and would ruin his career,” Santander said in a radio interview. “They said that if we did not win the game, we would suffer the consequences.” Racing, who face Belgrano on Saturday, have dropped to 16th in the Clausura championship and are 14th out of 20 in the relegation standings which are decided over three seasons. Further inflaming the men may have been the report that Moreno could leave the club and join rivals River Plate.
Argentine clubs are followed by groups of hardcore fans known as barras bravas, who are blamed for the country’s chronic hooliganism problem. These fans are often given free entry to matches and their travel to away games is subsidized by the club.
I have seen big money boosters; I have even heard about gamblers who pay for point shaving; and I know that there were athletes threatened here in the U.S., but I never heard of a win or else threat with a gun. I guess it’s like the saying attributed to Al Capone: “You get further with a kind word and a gun, than with just a kind word.”

As you may know, I hate the Chicago Cubs. Not enough to be in the ribbon at the top of this site, but I do. I didn’t used to. I grew up as one of those rare people who rooted for both teams. My nine-year-old self was just as devastated by the collapse of the Cubs in 1969 as anybody. I worked as an Andy Frain usher at both parks, and I enjoyed Wrigley Field more than the old Comiskey Park. The fans were knowledgable and opinionated (which helped cause the famous Lee Elia tirade).
But in the late 1990s, two things happened to change my mind: first, the Indignant Wife got some tickets from work for a Cub game and the Cubs lost like 5-1, but the one run was a meaningless Sammy Sosa homer in the seventh or eighth inning, and the fans were acting like they had won. “We lost, but at least Sammy hit a home run,” I heard numerous times as I was leaving the park.
Since Sammy Sosa was one of the most selfish players in baseball, not to mention the shadow of performance enhancing drugs, so I never liked Sosa. But he was beloved on the North Side even through the corked bat incident. It wasn’t until he walked out on the team on the last day of the 2004 season that the fans turned on Sosa.
Then, when the Tribune Company opened up its own ticket scalping agency, and didn’t share the revenues with the other teams, that was the last straw for me.
I was fairly indifferent with the Ricketts brothers and sister brought the club through their trust fund a few years ago. It was interesting to see a rich fan own the club, but the team hasn’t gotten any better and the Ricketts angered the city by proposing that funds that could be used on essential city services be diverted to renovate the ever crumbling Wrigley Field.
That proposal died a quick death under former Mayor Richard M. Daley, but had begun to gain some new traction under current Mayor Rahm Emanuel. That is, until the Ricketts’ kids billionaire father, Joe Ricketts, was reportedly behind a $10 million advertising buy to run an anti-President Obama ad which tried to reignite the ties between the President and Reverend Jeremiah Wright, whose anti-American diatribes had run all over right wing television and radio before the 2008 election.
Of course, besides being a very Democratic city; and the fact that Mayor Emanuel was President Obama’s first Chief of Staff; the push back was quick, angry, and severe. Attempts by Tom Ricketts to distance himself from his father and his views began almost immediately. The younger Ricketts called Mayor Emanuel, but found out via the newspapers that the mayor was avoiding his calls and made no time table to speak to Ricketts. Lots of people said that the Wrigley Field public funding was dead.
Well, it isn’t dead, but it isn’t healthy either. The NATO summit in Chicago pushed the Cub situation to the back pages of the paper, but the anger toward the trust fund children and their quest for civic charity hasn’t.
Long time readers also know that I’m a Left-Wing Liberal, and an Obama supporter, and as far as I’m concerned, old man Ricketts and his kids can pay for their own damn stadium.

T.J. Watson is my “godson” even though there was no religious ceremony proclaiming me as such (the joke was that I outbid our friend Maury for the right 17 years ago). Often we have kidded that somehow he got some of my DNA – he loves comic books (like me); his favorite band is The Who (ditto); and he loves movies (although his Mom and Dad share that trait). Also, T.J. and I suffer from depression.
Like me, he has been to therapy and we both take medication. But T.J. tried to commit suicide and was institutionalized. Over the course of his 17 years, I have been very proud of him, but never more so than this week. I direct you to last Wednesday’s Chicago Tribune articles and website for video: T.J. shared his issues with the world through a brief article; a graphic novel style comic; and an online interview. In the story, he talks frankly about the way he felt; his treatments; what worked and what didn’t.
Most important, while he admits that he is not “cured,” he is much improved and has hope for the future. There are tons of kids out there who are alienated and depressed. Some of them are bullied and their suicides are getting much needed press; but the issue is even bigger than that, and, as teenagers do, they internalize and think that they are the only ones who felt that way. They are wrong, and T.J. told his story and as one woman told his Mom, T.J. saved some lives with his article.
T.J. and his brother Matthew are the sons I will never have, and I love them like an uncle would. That will never change. Their parents are godparents to my youngest daughter, as the girls they will never have – a tidy reciprocal relationship. T.J. once again showed that he is one special young man. He says that I am like “his other Dad.” I am humbled and truly proud .

It’s easy to blame college athletes when they get caught taking money because the money goes for clothes, women, bling, drugs, etc. But, sometimes we rush to judgment and we may not have the whole story.
Former Ohio State quarterback Terrelle Pryor was caught selling memorabilia for money and tattoos, and brought down Coach Jim Tressell; was thrown out of school and treated in an Old Testament way (“remove the name of Moses from all buildings, statues, and monuments” – The Bible by way of the film “The Ten Commandments). But, according to an interview with Sports Illustrated, he sold his sports memorabilia to get money to help his family.
Now with the Oakland Raiders, Pryor received a five-game suspension during his final season, and he openly discussed why he made those decisions. “The reason why I did it was to pay my mother’s gas bill and some of her rent,” Pryor told the magazine. “She was four months behind, and the (landlord) was so nice because he was an Ohio State fan. He gave her the benefit of the doubt and she said, ‘My son will pay you back sometime if you just let me pay you back during my work sessions.’ She ended up losing her job, and she and my sister lived there.
”Let me remind you it was freezing cold in November, December and she’s using the oven as heat. That’s what I did as a kid. I was telling the NCAA, ‘Please, anything that you can do. I gave my mother this so my sister wouldn’t be cold, so my mother wouldn’t be cold.’ They didn’t have any sympathy for me.“
What may be the deciding factor is that he says that he has receipts to prove that the money went toward the family’s bills and not personal use. If true, this makes the case for paying the athletes even more compelling. Most of the athletes playing the money sports in colleges and universities are from poor backgrounds, often African-American, and there is all of this money that they generate and they can’t get any of it. It’s one thing to “need” the money for dates and stuff; it’s another thing entirely if it is to keep the heat on for his mother and sister.
The monolithic NCAA should have had a clause to allow athletes to prove there is an economic need and the organization can get money to them. I wonder why the booster money that reportedly funneled to the parents of Reggie Bush and Cam Newton couldn’t make their way to Pryor who was just as important to their programs and just as much a “star?”
Still, if true, this would cast a completely different picture on Terrell Pryor as a player and a man. It is easy to trash a young man’s name and reputation and hard to restore it, but in this case, let the building begin.

There is no sport I love more than football, especially the NFL. When I was growing up, I wanted to be Dick Butkus, the Hall of Fame linebacker. When I played, I reveled in hitting opposing players as hard as possible, but I never had the talent or the drive to be a college player or try to be a pro.
In those younger days, one thinks of having a child who fulfills the dream(s) that you had, which would have meant a son playing football, growing up and perhaps making the big time (and of course, thanking his mother on television – no one ever sends a shout out to Dads; why is that?) But it wasn’t a passionate dream; not something that burned in me; just kind of something that, I thought, would have been cool if it happened.
Life, of course, often makes other plans: I have two beautiful, willful, often difficult daughters which means that the NFL is not really an option. Considering the suicide death of Junior Seau this week, I’m glad that I won’t have a son offer up his body and mind to the meat-grinder that is football.
Seau, 43-years-of-age, killed himself this week with a shotgun blast to the chest. Like former Bear safety Dave Duerson, Seau did not shoot himself in the head so that his brain could be studied for damage resulting from his 20 year NFL career. How much did brain injury lead to the suicide remains to be seen; how much personal issues including being out of the spotlight and away from the team experience played in it is also subject to question (and the fact that it occurred one week after the NFL Draft, when young men joyously join NFL teams is more than ironic).
A question now has to be asked: if a method of playing football more safely to the head – either through rules, different teaching, or better equipment – cannot be developed, should serious discussion be given to the elimination of the sport? Going too far? Probably, and there is simply too much money in the sport at all levels for it to go away, but young men are bashing themselves in collisions as severe as auto accidents for our amusement. I know what some will say – they are playing on their own volition and often making millions of dollars doing it – they know what they’re getting into. But I say that the modern athlete doesn’t really know anything other than the plays on the field, the celebrity and the big money they find out about in the press. Furthermore, as all young men are – they think they’re invincible; they can worry about the rest of their lives later. Finally, the fact is that 60% of NFL players eventually file bankruptcy, so even the money isn’t permanent.
I don’t have an answer – I don’t know that anyone does. And I’m not convinced that the large number of ex-players suing the NFL over the issue of concussions will do any good either. CTE or Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy which has shown up in the brains of many NFL and NHL athletes’ autopsies is a relatively recent find, and, as of now, can only be detected after death. Tests on live subjects and possible means of treating the disease are years away at best. My argument against the Player suits against the NFL is that the league somehow knew that the sport caused CTE. Without some kind of “smoking gun” I don’t know how these suits can win, and how much of this is a legitimate call for reform, and how much is just another greedy money grab?
All that all parties agree on is that something has to happen for the good of the sport and the men who play it. In the meantime, I’m glad I have girls.

Wouldn’t it be the ultimate irony if one of the greatest players in baseball history ended his career fielding in practice? That looks like the case for 42-year-old Mariano Rivera, the closer with the most saves in baseball history.
He was shagging flies in the outfield before the Yankees’ game in Kansas City like he did before every game in his 18-year career when, according to witnesses, his knee buckled before he reached the center field wall. Rivera was carted off the field and an MRI showed that Rivera has not only a torn ACL, but also a torn meniscus, which would make any return more difficult.
While nothing had been publicly said, it was widely believed that Rivera would retire after this season and one last chance at a World Series Championship. Rivera and shortstop Derek Jeter are true rarities and throwbacks – star players who played for only one team their whole careers. In days of free agency and players free to move to the highest bidder, Rivera, who is head-and-shoulders statistically, the best reliever in baseball history, he and Jeter are Yankees and will always be Yankees.
There is a slight chance that Rivera could be back for the postseason, players have done it in the past, but most of those times, the players were in their 20s, not 42. And if the rehab is more that 6-8 months, will Rivera want to return?
Sport is a funny place – sometimes funny ha-ha, more often funny weird. That a Hall of Fame level career ends on an innocuous incident in a relatively uneventful evening in an early season game is funny weird; and sad in a way.
Unless you’re a Yankee hater, that is.