I have to grudgingly admit that the Chicago cubs made a smarter move this week than their crosstown rivals, the White Sox. The White Sox hired former third baseman Robin Ventura to be their manager despite the fact that Ventura has never been a manager or coach on any level. The Cubs, however, appear to have pried GM Theo Epstein away from the Boston Red Sox to run the baseball operation.
Epstein, of course, was the youngest GM in baseball history when he took over the Red Sox in 2002 at the age of 28. He has been at the helm of two World Series champions, ending the 85 year “Curse of the Bambino.” This season, despite the second biggest payroll in the game and preseason predictions that Boston could win 120 games (?), the Bosox actually had a historic collapse. They were nine games ahead in the American League Wild Card race at the end of August, but ended up losing to Tampa Bay. With the finger pointing just beginning, manager Terry Francona asked the club not to pick up the option for him to return next year, and word was that Epstein, despite being from the Boston area and the Red Sox GM being his “dream job” all of his life, the winds of change were blowing.
On the face of it, Epstein is the perfect candidate: he led a team that plays in a small, historic ballpark, that had suffered years of futility, to baseball’s Promised Land. He will certainly be used to leading a team under a microscope of media, local and national fan attention. However, despite being a “big market club,” the Cubs won’t spend like the Red Sox did. The Ricketts’ acquisition of the club ended the cozy relationship between the Chicago Tribune owned team and WGN superstation.
All that’s left is compensation, and then Epstein will reportedly sign a 5-year contract worth $15 and $20 million. Big money, and Chicago is a slightly nicer place than Boston (not that Boston is bad, mind you). I understand needing a new challenge, and also getting out of a town that was starting to question your every move, but I have to ask, are you sure, Theo?

(By the way, I have a friend who defended the Ventura hiring, saying that managers are overrated, that they don’t make much of a difference. Maybe. There is a train of thought that a good manager will only help a team win 4-5 more games per season. That might be true, but I counter that a bad manager costs you that many wins or more. Instead of helping a team win 5 games, they lose those games and another five on top of it. Think about it – when you’ve had a good boss, don’t you work harder and better? What about when you have a bad boss? Makes you not want to come to work; you’re less efficient. Don’t get me wrong, I’m rooting for Ventura, and in time, he coule become a very good manager, I just don’t think that you give the keys to the family car to your kid who just got his first tricycle.)

“Yes he’s free to be put in a cage in Harlem in New York City;
And he’s free to be put in a cage on the South Side of Chicago;
And the West Side;
And he’s free to be put in a cage in Hough in Cleveland;
And he’s free to be put in a cage in East St. Louis;
And he’s free to be put in a cage in Fillmore in San Francisco
And he’s free to be put in a cage in Roxbury in Boston
They’re gatherin’ ‘em up from miles around
Keeping the ni##ers down.”
Randy Newman “Rednecks”

As a suburbanite, I am closely watching the proposed increases in fares on Metra, the Chicago commuter railroad because I use the train every workday. It was just another thing in my life that was increasing in price. I may not like it, but I don’t really have much choice, but I didn’t know that the railroad was trying to enact economic barriers to city residents, especially those in lower income communities.
The story is that Metra had proposed fare hikes across the board to cover a forecasted shortfall, but that Chicagoans, particularly South Side residents, would see fare hikes ranging from 44 percent to 69 percent, while suburban riders would only see increases ranging from 9 percent to 34 percent.
I admit, liberal that I am, that I get tired sometimes of the seemingly endless protests about any change, and I also say that the “race card” gets pulled too often. Claims of racism should be like a police officer’s gun, pulled only when you need to use it. This time however, state legislators, aldermen, community groups, and riders have all blasted the public train system for apparently trying to gauge the people who can least afford it.
That is something that I have never understood – why corporations “screw” the least powerful of us. There are few grocery stores, but the few stores there are have much higher prices than stores in middle class or affluent communities. The same can be said for gas stations 0 gas prices always seem higher in poor communities. I understand the cost of security and a higher level of theft, but it seems like the increase is more than necessary to cover the additional expense.
Unlike private corporations who seem to answer to no one, as a public “utility,” Metra has had to respond to the public outcry and is revising its schedule of fare increases.
Good.

As a sports fan, you never want to root for injuries, and you certainly don’t want to wish anyone’s death. Even though we will all die, I would say that 99.9999% of sports fans don’t wish anyone’s death.
And that is certainly the case for Oakland Raiders’ owner Al Davis, who died over the weekend at the age of 82. I used to love the Raiders, the ultimate bad boys who played hard and partied harder. (I highly recommend Peter Richmond’s book “Badasses: The Legend of Snake, Foo, Dr. Death, and John Madden’s Oakland Raiders”)
I was a fan back in the early 1970s when they had Darryl “the Mad Bomber” Lamonica. Third-down and short yardage, this team would be flinging it downfield. I was sad when they benched Lamonica for this “kid” named Ken Stabler, but he was and is my favorite QB. Calm in the pocket, probably not the best passer, but Stabler knew how to win games.
Of course, the Raiders gave us John Madden, Jack Tatum, and so many other memorable players, stories and myths. And at the center of it all was Davis. He was at his best bedeviling the league, especially late Commissioner Pete Roselle. Davis moved his franchise where he liked, and when the NFL said no, he sued them. Davis, I think almost batted 1.000 in lawsuits between the Raiders and the NFL.
And, as often as Davis won in court and in the boardrooms, his teams won. They won an AFL Championship in 1967; they won three Super Bowls, but, after their appearance in Super Bowl XXXVII, which the Raiders lost to Tampa Bay, the Raiders were something they had never been – irrelevant, and the blame could only be laid at Davis’ feet. Coaches came and went; poor draft choices based on the way the Raiders had won in the past were no longer smart moves.
I would have to say that Raider fans were like Blackhawks fans earlier in this decade – loved their team, but depressed that the team would probably not make any improvement until the owner died. In the Hawks’ case, it was Bill Wirtz, but he was not beloved, he had never won a championship. (And, of course, his son Rocky reversed many of his father’s most rigid policies, won a Stanley Cup, and the team still sells out.) Davis wanted to win at all costs, but he couldn’t change with the times, allow new thinking to come into the fore. So, the Raiders have been terrible since that 2002 season, although they are above .500 five games into an NFL season for the first time since 2002.
But, we still are sad at the rebel’s death. You just know he’ll be buried in black and silver (and I wouldn’t be surprised if the casket were in those colors).

With their backs to the collective wall, the NBA and the Players’ Union remained far apart in their attempt to negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement over the weekend. Rumors of a 50/50 revenue split apparently didn’t exist, or wasn’t enough, and so, NBA Commissioner David Stern announced last night that the league was cancelling the first two weeks of the regular season.
As a former NBA fan, I understand the fans’ pain at seeing games starting to get cancelled, however, the NBA season is much too long (the same can be said for the NHL, NBA and even Major League Baseball for that matter). But the NBA season is especially long and drawn out. The season starts in November, ends in April with the playoffs ending in June. Like an NBA game, there’s really no reason to pay attention until the end of the season as teams jockey for position. Personally, a shorter season may actually help the league in the short run.
Of course, this won’t help the payrolls. Some owners would make more money if there were no season at all, which would be a short sighted move for the league. Look at Baseball, which lost 33% of tickets sold after the lockout cancelled the World Series. The NHL took quite a lot of time to recover from its lockout, something that I hope they remember when their CBA expires after this season). Stern and the NBA, I’ve always felt, were smarter than their cohorts with the other leagues (although many NBA owners are also NHL owners); this was the first league with a salary cap and other progressive economic ideas that the other leagues adopted.
There are some who think the season is gone; others think the league will start after Christmas; a few optimists believe that an agreement can be hammered out quickly. As usual, the fans will suffer the most, followed by the second and third tier players who live from paycheck to paycheck.
Who stands to gain? The NHL who have the sports world’s complete attention when football is over; that is, of course, if they don’t drop the ball, I mean puck.

I have long advocated that one of the reasons that people like sports is that things are more “black and white” – if you win, you keep your job, if you don’t, win, out you go. Of course, it isn’t as serious since the people getting “fired” have been earning millions of dollars to win or lose, and so it isn’t devastating to them or family members. In other words, they don’t have to worry about kids eating as a result.
I’d say that one of the things that people like about sports is less politics. You don’t have to deal with backstabbing as much. Or at least, that what many people think, but we’re naïve. Wherever there are people, there’ll be politics. We generally don’t think much of teams that play poorly because they don’t like their coach or GM, because if you’re making that much money, you should come to play every night. But it’s happened, in almost every sport.
Despite all of that, what has apparently happened on the South Side of Chicago is Julius Caesar and Citizen Kane put together. We all know that relations between former White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen and GM Ken Williams deteriorated to a horrible situation for the last two years. Guillen, seeing that the Florida Marlins wanted him, pushed the team to extend his contract, Owner Jerry Reinsdorf said no, and Guillen is hanging out on South Beach.
Most people thought that either Sandy Aomar, Jr., Dave Martinez, or former Red Sox manager Terry Francona were the leaders in filling Guillen’s position. Until yesterday, when the White Sox shocked everyone by announcing that the team had hired former Sox third baseman Robin Ventura as manager. My friend Carl Bonasera, one of the most astute analysts of baseball in general and the White Sox in particular, said that Ventura would be the next manager one year ago when he joined the team as special adviser to player development director Buddy Bell. However, Ventura has only bee in that position for four months, and has no managerial or coaching experience. People are still scratching their heads, because as smart as your kid may be, you don’t hand your child who just learned to ride a bicycle the keys to the family car.
We know that the White Sox like first time managers; they also like ex-players (17 of the 39 managers in team history have been ex-players); and Reinsdorf’s loyalty is legendary. That said, unlike Ryne Sandberg of the Cubs, who the Cubs let manage in the minor leagues to prepare for the big club (and then they didn’t give him the job last season which led to Sandberg leaving the organization); Ventura has never been in that position.
It would boggle the mind, except for the article written by Joe Cowley of the Sun-Times and published this morning. According to his piece, many baseball folks are saying that pitching coach Don Cooper pushed Guillen out by asking for, and getting a four year contract extension in August. Cooper put his own rear end above the team, because previously, the team had said that Guillen had the right to retain coaches. Realistically, none of the managerial prospects would have wanted to be forced to work with a pitching coach who had a longer contract than they would have gotten.
According to the article, why would Williams side with Cooper? Because Cooper was Williams’ spy on the team – telling the GM all that was said about him and the team. This would be in character for Williams, who has become increasingly surly with Guillen, the press, and the other coaches, culminating in the shouting match between Williams and now departed hitting coach Greg Walker.
What do I think? My attitude toward the team is definitely soured. I agreed with Guillen leaving, but I wanted Williams to leave town with him. Now, I will boo Cooper every time he goes to the mound. Will Ventura be successful? It will depend on who the team hires as bench coach. That man will be the true manager in terms of decisions.
I feel for the fans (as always) and the older players like Konerko and Pierzynski. Do they have enough time left in their careers to play through a manager’s learning curve? Would they want to? Is 2012 now a written off season while Ventura learns the job? Should the fans pay money for a team with an inexperienced skipper?
The buck stops at Reinsdorf, who allowed all of this to happen. Perhaps the team won’t be able to move forward until Cooper and Williams find their way out of town. I hope not, but I may be right.

Headquartered in Bristol, CT, ESPN has had a huge impact on the East Coast bias regarding television coverage – that being that the Yankees and Red Sox are the center of the baseball universe and the other teams are just not important.
Yes, the Yankees and Red Sox have the best revenue streams, which allow them to outspend the rest of the sport from 2X to 6-8X for some of the small market teams. The two teams can get the biggest free agents and, command the lion share of mainstream media coverage.
To be fair, there has been success at the end of all that – the Yankees won two years ago, with the Red Sox winning two years before that, and of course, breaking the Curse of the Bambino in 2004. but that’s three wins in 11 years since the Yankees won twice in 1999 and 2000, a championship percentage of .272 – solid, but not what one would expect for teams that spend nearly ½ of a billion dollars in salaries per year.
Add to that the stilted schedule that loads up on division games, and you have the Yanks and Red Sox playing each other, it seems, almost every other weekend. And, of course, those games are always featured on the national broadcast, ESPN and the MLB Network, as though the rest of the country has bought in on this egotism of the East Coasters that they are the center of the universe.
Well, this season, the rest of the league can take center stage. The Red Sox pulled an epic collapse and lost the wild card to Tampa Bay, but they have still dominated the headlines with Manager Terry Francona leaving and GM Theo Epstein perhaps looking at joining the Cubs. Last night, the Tigers ended the Yankees’ season with a 3-2 win in Yankee Stadium where the Bronx Bombers were supposed to be invincible.
That leaves the Bob Ryans and Peter Gammonses of the world forced to talk about other teams other than the “Big Two.” It will also keep both the Yankee fans and the Red Sox Nation quiet. Enjoy the silence.

I find it amusing that the same politicians who were sucking up to the Tea Party are “shocked” at the current “Occupy Wall Street” movement. Protests began on Wall Street to protest the disconnect between the investment world and the real world, and those protests have grown out of New York and taken hold throughout the country.
Like the Tea Party, the people in the Occupy protests have numerous reasons to protest, and their goals can’t be simplified, but in the week that the CEO of one of the biggest banks in the country said that they have a right to make a profit (the lacking part being that they do have a right to make profits, but not gargantuan profits by screwing the public), it’s what I’ve been saying for a long time – there is a precedent for extreme action against the rich – the French Revolution. The more the politicians line the pockets of politicians who do nothing but work for the very rich, while the 99% of the rest of the country suffers, the more likely that people will get upset and take to the streets.
The Tea Partiers were first, but that was spearheaded by very old people scared that there was an African-American president. I have said all along that if the same policies had been supported by President (Mrs.) Clinton, or a President John Kerry, there would be no Tea Party. But this is a grass roots movement by people who aren’t social conservatives, less likely to be racists, who see the Koch Brothers and others buying their country and telling everyone else to “eat cake.”
I have always believed that America is a compassionate country; one that likes to help people out; aren’t looking to screw everybody else; who believe that businesses are important, but that people are too.
I applaud them.