I think that we should thank the City of Chicago and WXRT for giving us no reason to come to Grant Park on July 4th for the annual free concert. Where the radio station had sponsored acts like Moby, Matthew Sweet, and the final Replacements concert over the years, for the second straight year, the station has picked opening acts to “headline” on July 4.
Last year, Big Head Todd and the Monsters headlined the annual concert. They are a boring band; not exactly one that compels me to go to a sweltering park and listen to music with 600,000 of my closest friends. I even made a comment, unreturned, to DJ Lin Brehmer via e-mail telling him that bookings like this were helping to kill WXRT: more boring “jam” bands playing mostly mid tempo songs with little real rocking power.
This year, the July 4th headliners are Gomez and the Old 97s. Both are Ok bands with mediocre “hits” that get big play on WXRT, but I would rather see Stevie Wonder or Chaka Khan, both of whom are playing Taste of Chicago the week before.
Well, I guess WXRT is doing a public service, giving people reason to find better things to do on July 4.

It’s sad when an athlete falls on hard times. It’s sometimes sadder to see a former athlete trade on his fame as a former player, build a business and then either see it fail, or worse, do something criminal to pad his wallet.
Such is the case with former Chicago Bear fullback Roland Harper, best known as the lead blocker for the late Hall of Famer Walter Payton from 1975 to 1982. Harper pled guilty this week to fraud for allowing his trucking company to be used by a white-owned firm to obtain contracts set aside for minority-owned businesses. Harper, now 55-year-old, pleaded guilty in federal court to one count of mail fraud and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in return for the recommendation that he serve 16 months in prison.
Harper, who is African-American, was president of Rohar Construction. He obtained contracts from Chicago Public Schools on behalf of Monahan Landscape Co., which got more than $1.5 million in payment.
And how much of the $1.5 million did Harper get? Harper admitted pocketing about $80,000 in the scheme, according to his plea agreement. He got a measly $80,000 for taking money away from other deserving legitimate African-American or Hispanic landscaping companies who certainly could have used the $1.5 million in government contracts; could have done a better job than the shadow company did; and hired low skilled minority people to do the work. It is truly a shame when black people are willing to cheat the system and hold back blacks and Hispanics in conjunction while some white person/company gets rich. At least this time, the owner of Monahan Landscape faces 5 years in prison for his part in the deception.

I wasn‘t surprised that the Celtics finished the job and defeated the Lakers in Game 6 of the NBA Finals, but when I awoke this morning, I was surprised at the final score: 131-98. It was a trouncing.
As a former hater of the Celtics, I am at peace with this. For one thing, I’m happy for Kevin Garnett, who is finally getting his just due as one of the best players in the game with championship validation. I am also happy for Ray Allen and series MVP Paul Pierce; both decent guys who toiled for a long time on some poor teams, waiting for the right mix of players at the right time to gel and win a title.
And, of course, Red Auerbach is in his grave, having had no part in the building of this team, and we don’t have to watch his insufferable arrogance as he lit his championship cigar.

I know that the Mets have been one of the disappointing teams in baseball for the past couple of years. Last season, the team suffered through a 1969-Cub-like collapse, leading the NL East by 7 games with 17 games left to play, but were tied with Philadelphia with three games left and lost on the final day as the Phillies won to finish in second place. And this season has not been much better. Despite the third highest payroll in baseball, the Mets are 33-35 and 6½ games behind the Phillies and much closer to the bottom of the division than the top. For the past couple of weeks, the buzzards have circled over manager Willie Randolph.
Randolph had been in line to be the manager of the Yankees once Joe Torre left, but Randolph tired of waiting (and rightfully so), and got the Mets job in 2004. Randolph’s first year was a grand success, making the playoffs, but in 2006, the Mets broke Atlanta’s string of 14 straight NL East titles by winning the division.
Maybe the team needs new leadership (and it is always easier to fire the manager than the players). Maybe the team has tuned out on Randolph. But the team, particularly GM Omar Minaya should stop leaving Randolph hanging. Fire him if you’re going to, or leave him alone. Randolph has been a class act throughout his playing career, as a coach, and now as a manager. Expectations are sky high in New York for both teams, and it is easier to fire a manager. We know that the Mets are going to fire Willie Randolph, but he deserves to be treated with respect; fire the guy and move on.

By now, most people that follow baseball closely, as a fan or member of the media knows that outfielder Milton Bradley “has some issues.” He slammed a plastic bottle at a fan in the right-field bleachers at Dodger Stadium in 2004 after someone threw the bottle on the field. This got him a five game suspension. He had a confrontation with Cleveland manager Eric Wedge during spring training. This got him shipped to L.A. Last year, while playing for San Diego, he tore the ACL in his right knee when Padres manager Bud Black spun him to the ground to keep him from going after an umpire. Umpires are regular targets of Bradley’s ire; in addition to the above incident, we was suspended for four games for tossing a bag of balls on the field after being ejected.
This week, now playing for the Texas Rangers, Bradley wasn’t satisfied with an 11-5 victory; he was upset with Kansas City Royals announcer Ryan Lefebvre and bounded up four flights of stairs to “meet” Lefebvre before Ranger GM Jon Daniels and manager Ron Washington stopped him from storming the booth.
According to Bradley, who was the designated hitter that night, reportedly heard what he considered derogative remarks made by Lefebvre on a TV in the Rangers clubhouse. Lefebvre said the comments were intended to praise Josh Hamilton, who missed nearly four years of professional baseball with cocaine and alcohol additions, rather than tear down Bradley, but I guess he made some comparison that Bradley took the wrong way. Bradley said that he wanted to “introduce” himself to Lefebvre, who is the son of former major league player and manager Jim Lefebvre.
Apparently, the announcers were ripping on Bradley because he walks to the dugout out to right field, drops his bat (after outs, I suppose) and makes gestures to the fans in right field and above the dugout. This is not to support Bradley, but Lefebrve obviously knows nothing about some players in baseball. Rickey Henderson, who is going into the Hall of Fame once the five year after-retirement waiting period is over, use to taunt the fans mercilessly, including issuing the middle finger salute, grabbing his crotch, and mouthing obscenities. When I worked for Andy Frain, I hated working down whichever foul line Rickey would be patrolling that night. He would get the fans into such a lather, that they would just be livid the whole night. Henderson never did anything, I think he did it to relieve the boredom between pitches and batters and during pitching changes.
So, it’s not unusual if Milton Bradley is doing much the same, but he isn’t the all time run scorer or holder of the all time stolen base record.
Upon returning to the clubhouse, Bradley reportedly screamed at teammates and broke down in tears before being consoled by his teammates. I think that Milton Bradley has some problems, and maybe he needs some more counseling, but he may not be the “monster” that he is made out to be.

I admit that I do not believe in the “lone gunman” theory of the John Kennedy assassination, so I guess I’m not at all surprised that former NBA referee Tim Donaghy, already facing jail for taking money from gamblers and gambling on games, has made allegations that the league is corrupt. He wrote a letter to the court mentioning particularly one 2002 playoff series may have been thrown by two referees. In his letter to the authorities, he claims that two referees known as “company men” were working a best-of-seven series. One team, called “Team 5” in the letter, was leading the series 3 games to 2. In the sixth game, Donaghy alleges that the pair purposely ignored fouls made by opponent “Team 6” and made phantom calls putting its players at the free-throw line. “Team 6” won the game and came back to win the series, the letter said. (Many pundits are claiming that this is the Sacramento Kings-Los Angeles Lakers series in 2002, which did appear suspect at the time.)
Donaghy says that the referees have a lot of contact with owners, front office people and players, particularly, getting autographs from the players (that can be sold for considerable money); and that this fraternization can lead to favoritism. No doubt. But the part of the letter that is most damaging to the league (and I believe has most merit) is that Donaghy claims that the league routinely encouraged refs to make bogus foul calls to manipulate results. The letter states that the NBA discouraged refs from calling technical fouls on star players to keep them in games in order to protect ticket sales and television ratings. “If the NBA wanted a team to succeed, league officials would inform referees that opposing players were getting away with violations,” the letter said. “Referees then would call fouls on certain players, frequently resulting in victory for the opposing team.”
This is the 800-pound gorilla that has haunted the league for decades. Way back in “The Sportswriter” days, I regularly wrote about concerns about rigged NBA games. In the 1980s and 1990s, there were always hints that the NBA “wanted” the Knicks, Lakers and Celtics to make the playoffs, and that games could be “maneuvered” to assure series going as long as possible, preferably the full seven games. While I don’t believe that the league rigged the ultimate results of playoff series, I do believe, in my heart, that games 5 and 6 in playoff series are subject to question, especially if the team behind is from a major market.
My concerns about the refs go way back as well. There was a television interview in the 1990s with former official Jake O’Donnell, who said that he went out of his way to “teach” players a lesson about who was boss on the court. Fouls would be called against a player, or not called when that player was fouled just to fuel O’Donnell’s ego. Around the time that this interview was printed, O’Donnell was “retired” by the league. Of course, several officials got into trouble with the IRS for selling their first class tickets provided by the league to travel to games, and exchanging them for coach tickets and keeping the extra revenue. Furthermore, during the Bulls’ glory years, there was always concern that referee Hue Hollins did not like Scottie Pippen and important calls were missed or mistaken at crucial moments in a game.
This is not to mention the ultimate NBA “conspiracy theory:” the sudden retirement and eventual return of Michael Jordan. Jordan retired the first time soon after having a private meeting with Stern. Was Jordan’s “retirement” a “suspension” or a time out to let the stories of Jordan’s gambling addiction die down? I believe only Jordan, Stern, and perhaps one representative of each man attended that meeting, and perhaps, on one of their death beds we may learn the truth. Or it may remain a mystery, as vexing as the location of Jimmy Hoffa.
Of course, Commissioner David Stern has criticized the letter. Other NBA officials and members of the referees’ union have done the same, saying that the only proven criminal activity has been done by Donaghy. And they are correct. Donaghy is a bad man who did bad things and is getting what is coming to him. Let’s not be naïve: this letter was released on the same day that two of the major market teams: the Celtics and Lakers, played game 3 of the NBA Finals and just a few weeks before Donaghy is to be sentenced in his conviction. The letter “shows” that he is cooperating with the investigation of the league, and could lead to probation or a reduced sentence.
It could also be revenge. League officials believe that the letter was going to be submitted to the court next Tuesday, but that could have been after the finals, and Donaghy wanted to pay the league back for one last indignation instigated by the league. Reportedly, the NBA filed a letter with probation officials trying to get Donaghy, who has lost his job and family and has no real means of support, to pay restitution to the league of $1 million. The NBA claims this amount covers the costs of its investigation, but realistically, would they ever see that money? And isn’t this a drop in the bucket to the multi-million dollar enterprise that is the National Basketball Association?
You can call me Fox Mulder (David Ducovney’s character in The X-Files), but for years, I have claimed that something was rotten in Denmark, and despite David Stern’s claims to the contrary, I still believe that.

It has been funny over the past few months watching as the previously friendly rivalry between the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times increased in intensity. The Trib made sure to highlight former Sun-Times parent company CEO Conrad Black’s conviction for embezzlement. The Sun-Times has been all over the Tribune Company since its sale to financier Sam Zell, and plans to sell the Cubs and Wrigley Field either together or as a group.
So, it was no surprise to me that the Trib is playing up a rift in the Sun-Times sports section, and as usual, it involves lightning rod Jay Marriotti. The columnist has made plenty of enemies over the years. Chicago Tribune.com listed that he “has been called a ’pissant’ by Jerry Reinsdorf, a ‘hiney bird’ by Hawk Harrelson and much worse by Ozzie Guillen.
Not for the first time, Mariotti has pissed off coworkers at his own newspaper, so much so that Editor-in-Chief Michael Cooke and the sports editors refused to run columns by my friend and mentor Rick Telander last week. Apparently, this round of the ongoing war started when Mariotti patted himself on the back as usual, saying of Guillen: “As you may have noticed through the years, I am the Blizzard’s only critic in the Chicago media, mostly because my soft colleagues either fear Guillen’s wrath, enjoy how he rips me, work for one of the Reinsdorf-controlled broadcast outlets or are afraid of getting on the chairman’s bad side.”
The Tribune article continues: “The next day, Sun-Times national baseball writer Chris De Luca led his column this way: ‘The same critics who avoid ever stepping into the White Sox’s clubhouse are calling the Chicago media soft for not skewering manager Ozzie Guillen. They want Guillen fired yesterday. Sounds tough, but the rhetoric comes up a little, well, soft.’
I know for a fact that Telander is no fan of Mariotti. His nickname for Mariotti is “the Wind Sock,” meaning that his opinions change along with the weather. There was a well publicized incident when writers were forced to separate the two men from fisticuffs at a rare time when Mariotti was actually attending a sporting event in the Cubs’ press box. Any sports reader knows that Mariotti is not a “journalist,” he is the sports version of Bill O’Reilly: stir up controversy with no concern for any “facts” that may be involved. Guillen himself noted that Mariotti hardly ever covers events in person, challenging him to speak to the manager face-to-face (an act which, to my knowledge, has never occurred. His column is the print version of the worst of sports talk radio. Personally, I never read his column, only glancing at the headline to see what horse manure he is shoveling that day.
So, Telander stood up for his colleagues and reportedly blasted back in a Wednesday column that wasn’t printed (the paper printed that Telander was “taking the day off”). Undaunted, Telander reportedly filed an altered version of his original article for the Friday paper that was killed by the Editor-in-chief.
I admit that Telander is an old friend of mine, but he is absolutely right. We know that Mariotti’s job is to stir the pot and say the most outlandish things. To a certain extent, they may even encourage him to go too far in the name of sales. Still, the powers-that-be at the Sun-Times should have given Telander a chance to respond to Mariotti’s rants. But that’s the difference: Rick Telander is a professional, accomplished journalist; Jay Mariotti is a cockroach with little more than an attitude and a soapbox.