One of the best things about sports is fans’ love of yelling for changes and complaining about changes made and not made. It gives us something to argue over (and grist for all kinds of media including blogs). There is no greater argument than who should stay or be traded/cut. Long time readers know that I don’t write about firing people lightly unless it is obviously warranted.
The truncated 2020 baseball season was more fun here in Chicago with the Cubs and White Sox both in contention. The Cubs weren’t front runners for the World Series, but they did win their division and made the playoff where they were swept by the Marlins in the best of three series. The surprise was the South Side team. The Sox were expected to be contenders in 2021 but they hit like gangbusters and got solid pitching from Lucas Giolito and Dallas Keuchel.
All season, fans focused on Manager Ricky Renteria. The team seemed to win despite him: strange pitching changes, weird decisions, and the end of season slump that came right after the team clinched a playoff spot. At that time, the Sox were the number 2 seed in the playoffs, by the time the season ended, they were the number 7 seed and were bounced out of the playoffs by the A’s having won one more game than their crosstown neighbors.
Already there are writers who are questioning the decision. GM Rick Hahn said that the parting was mutual, but Renteria did love his team and would not leave a team that is a World Series contender for 2021. Of course, Renteria helmed the Cubs during their rebuild, but when Joe Maddon became available, the Cubs leapt on Maddon. After a season off, the White Sox hired Renteria to lead their rebuild. Solid moves to surround Jose Abreu with Tim Anderson, Luis Robert, Eloy Jimenez, Yemani Grenel, Nick Madrigal and Yoan Moncada, all turned out great. The Sox were at or near the top of the League in hitting for most of the season. The team looked like it was winning despite Renteria; glaring mistakes were covered up by timely hitting.
The final straw, I think was the swoon. Renteria was used to being soft on his players because nothing was expected of them but improvement. Once they made the playoffs, especially in a 60 game season, there was no reason to lighten completely up. They played lackadaisical baseball and lost nearly every game after clinching. The young guys needed a firmer hand, someone to keep pushing them, keep them sharp in preparation for the playoffs.
So, Renteria’s gone. There has been no word on the status of the other coaches. Hitting Coach Frank Medechino should keep his job, the Sox hit like no White Sox team since the 1983 South Side Hit Men. It is being reported that long-time Pitching Coach Don Cooper is out. I for one am glad; while Cooper did do a decent job most of the time, the rumors that he spied on former Manager Ozzie Guillen to get him fired while keeping his own job never felt right to me. Ever since then, I don’t believe any manager had full support from Cooper.
So, who should the next manager be? Tongues were wagging that maybe it was time to bring Guillen back? He has wanted to return to the dugout after getting fired in Chicago and saying too many controversial things in Miami (including some about the ownership). I thought this would be a long shot despite Owner Jerry Reinsdorf’s loyalty to guys who used to work for him. The stumbling block was always EVP Kenny Williams who argued constantly with Guillen and who probably was getting info from Cooper. Despite comments to the contrary, I don’t think either man has fully buried the hatchet.
So, Sandy Alomar Jr. seems like an excellent pick. Passed over like so many Latinx coaches, Alomar has been in the final mix for managers for the past several years. Now that Dave Martinez has led the Nationals to a World Series title, that old dinosaur should be dead at last. Whomever is selected, being able to connect with the Latino players on the team will be crucial, especially with their father figure manager gone. Other pundits are saying AJ Hinch or Joey Cora, both excellent choices but both befouled by the Houston Astros cheating scandal. I think that Buck Showalter is too old.
It will be interesting to see who the White Sox select. Unlike other managerial hires, this one could make a very good young team great for a very long time, or underachieve. My fingers are certainly crossed.

The novelty of having both Chicago baseball teams – the Cubs and White Sox, in the playoffs ended quickly. The Cubs surrendered quickly, losing two straight to the Florida Marlins, and this time, there was no Steve Bartman touching a foul ball to blame. Simply, the Cubs haven’t hit all season. They really haven’t hit well since the 2016 World Series Championship team. With Kris Bryant, Javy Baez, and Anthony Rizzo, they should be scoring more runs.
Personally, I think that the Cubs would do better with a traditional leadoff man. A speedy player who can draw walks and hit for average and be a constant risk to steal opens the offense. Trying to have Bryant and even slower Kyle Schwarber batting leadoff was a dumb idea, and, to be fair, one that originated with former manager Joe Maddon.
The man who didn’t get a leadoff man is President of baseball Operations Theo Epstein. The fact that the front office wunderkind didn’t follow-up the 2016 title with another championship like his Red Sox teams did is clearly an annoyance to the Fans and, it is rumored, to the Ricketts family. There were stories in the news over the weekend that with one year left on his contract, Epstein may be on the same short leach that Epstein put Maddon on last season.
It is possible that the core of the Cub lineup from the 2016 Champions is also breaking up. Bryant has been trade bait/rumors all season and suffered through another injury-filled season (4 HR, 11 RBI). Baez had a mediocre season for him (8 HR, 24 RBI). Rizzo, the fact of the ball club also underperformed (11 HR, 24 RBI). It is a strong possibility that the club may look very different next season.
Meanwhile, the up-and-coming White Sox put together great hitting and solid pitching, at least until the final week or so of the season when they went from division leader to number 7 seed in the whole AL playoff field. Tim Anderson followed his 2019 AL Batting Championship with a .322 BA. Jose Abreu had a breakout, maybe MVP season with 19 home runs and 60 RBI in the pandemic shortened season. Lucas Giolitto pitched a no hitter. For all of that, the White Sox won one more game in the playoffs than the Cubs and are in the same position: watching the other teams advance.
The South Side is not without personnel issues. Manager Ricky Renteria made several managing mistakes during the season, and I’m not talking about the ones that make sense but don’t pan out. Renteria was routinely criticized for the way he used pitchers, and other fielding errors. My friend Carl Bonasera, who I’ve said is the most astute baseball mind I know when it comes to the White Sox, wants Reneria gone for another reason. The soft, uplifting approach is fine for kids who aren’t in the post season and are expected to compete. These White Sox are young, yes, but they needed some fire, some toughness from Renteria that he didn’t give them. The Sox completely collapsed once they clinched a playoff spot. The tailspin cost them perhaps the number 2 seed instead of the number 7 seed against Oakland.
Unfortunately, unlike when Renteria was fired by the Cubs, there is no Joe Maddon out there unemployed. I think that the Sox now need a true manager, someone who will hold people accountable. The kids weren’t experienced, true, but they could have gone so much farther.
However, Chicago baseball, often irrelevant by the 4th of July, if not Memorial Day kept things exciting and interesting all of the shortened season. With the Bears mediocre, the Bulls hopeful with the long overdue overhaul of the coaching staff and front office, and the Hawks having shown some life during the bubble Stanley Cup playoffs, the Hot Stove league may be interesting this winter.

You hear about the 1,000,000 worldwide death toll, 200,000 of whom are Americans and it’s still hard to put a face on it. I know of a coworker’s mother who passed. A man I worked with as an Andy Frain usher back in the 1980s died. I know of a few people who have lived through it, but it isn’t until you hear of a person that you knew who was just bigger than life that brings it home.
I was flipping through the newspaper at lunch time today and stopped reading. Two-time World Series champion outfielder and all-out personality Jay Johnstone died Saturday from complications caused by the coronavirus.
Johnstone, 74, won his first title with the New York Yankees in 1978 and followed that up with another ring in 1981 with the Los Angeles Dodgers, who beat the Yankees. Johnstone’s MLB career spanned 20 seasons with the Yankees, Dodgers, Philadelphia Phillies, California Angels, Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox, Oakland A’s and San Diego Padres. He was a lifetime .267 hitter with 102 home runs.
I remember him as a player with the White Sox, but I was a working usher during his Cub years. The Associated Press calling him “baseball’s merry prankster,” which was absolutely correct. He knew who I was and threw rubber snakes at me among other things. I loved when he’d wear clown shoes to walk on the dugout during rain delays, or run the bases and slide on the wet tarp. Of course, this meant that ushers, (including me) had to stand in the rain because activity on the field mean that some drunken sod would want to get in on the fun and threaten or even run onto the field.
A good example was in a 2016 interview with the Tribune, Jay stated that his favorite memory has nothing to do with baseball. “I like to play pranks. One time, guys played a prank on me and sent a lady who must have weighed 300 pounds with a funny hat and a wide skirt to sing me a song during the seventh-inning stretch,” he said. “The crowd and the fans down the left-field line were laughing hysterically. There was nothing I could do. The game was held up while she sang me the telegram. I had to put my glove over my mouth, I was laughing so loud.”
He would nail teammates’ cleats to the floor or set them on fire. He cut out the crotch area of Rick Sutcliffe’s underwear. Johnstone once replaced the celebrity photos in the office of Dodgers manager Tom Lasorda with pictures of himself, Jerry Reuss and Don Stanhouse. He locked Lasorda in his office during spring training.
Another time, Johnstone and Reuss dressed up as groundskeepers to drag the infield during a game. Returning to the dugout, they were fined on the spot by Lasorda, who then asked Johnstone to pinch hit. He responded with a home run. “Jay came back and wanted to know if he could get a discount on the fine,” teammate Rick Monday recalled.
His daughter said Johnstone’s pranks didn’t end at the ballpark. She recalled rubber snakes in their pool and spiders by the bathtub. She said her friends loved being around her father because “he always made us laugh.” “He wanted to find the humor in life no matter how serious things got,” she said. “That was his motto to everything, bring a smile to people’s faces. Everyone loved him.”
After retiring, Johnstone briefly worked as a radio color commentator for the Yankees and Phillies. He was also into charities especially involving veterans – Johnston was a Marine.
Johnstone also suffered from dementia in recent years and died in a nursing home in Granada Hills, Calif. He is survived by his wife of 52 years, Mary Jayne Johnstone; his daughter Mary Jayne Sarah Johnstone; sister Sandy Clairmont; and son-in-law Ryan Dudasik.
Jay Johnstone was one of my favorite people in baseball. We will not see his like again.

Due to the pandemic, the Stanley cup Playoffs came to an end last night with the Tampa Bay Lightning hoisting the Cup for the first time since 2004. It has been an interesting trek to the summit: long a powerhouse in the Eastern Conference lead by sniper Steven Stamkos and Conn Smythe winner Victor Hedman, they came closest to the championship in 2015 when they lost to the Blackhawks in 6 games.
Honestly, on paper the Lightning were the better team (yes, I know the old joke “they don’t play on paper”); they were hungry, younger, faster, but the Blackhawks just knew how to win having won two of the previous five Cups. It should have been one era passing the torch to the next, but it took a few seasons for Tampa to fully rebound. The 2018-2019 team looked like their time had come: they won the President’s Cup for most points earned in the regular season, but then they had an epic fail. Leading 3-0 in the first game of the first round playoff series against Columbus, the wheels just came off. The Blue Jackets stormed back to win Game 1 then swept the Lightning out of the series. It was the first time in the current playoff structure that a number 1 seed lost to a number 8 seed. More shocking was that no President’s Cup winner had even been swept in a playoff series. Yes, President’s Cup winners only go on to win Lord Stanley about 34% of the time, but none had ever been swept.
Would the “Bolts” come back determined or have their spirits crushed by such an embarrassing loss? The Lightning had a great season, finishing with the second most points in the Eastern Conference, behind Atlantic Division rival Boston. They were considered a contender but they weren’t favorites. Covid-19 stopped the season, bringing about the unusual bubble arrangement that brought about a fine end to the season and no positive tests. Still, the Lightning weren’t favorites – Stamkos was injured and who knew if right wing Nikita Kucherov and goalie Andrei Vasilevsky would be able to pick up the slack. Stamkos ended up playing one period during the series, and while it wasn’t the hockey version of an injured Willis Reed plying on one leg for the Knicks back in the 1970s, it was a gutty performance. The big star other than Hedman coming out of the playoffs was center Brayden Point who was marvelous at both ends of the ice.
It turns out that the Lightning are the first team to win the Stanley Cup after being swept out of the playoffs the season before. They deserve it.

When the Big Ten changed their minds about playing football, I was skeptical. Unless you were a senior or had a serious chance to go to the NFL, I felt that the other players could use to time to work on studies and not take the beating that a Big Ten football season takes on the players. I was less surprised that the SEC would fight tooth and nail to play, there was just too much money involved with the “Junior NFL” to cancel or postpone play.
Football is the great unknown. Shields and tests and sequestering players in a “bubble” away from most other people has succeeded greatly for the NHL and seems to be working well for the NBA. Football, there’s a lot of contact; no masks; no bubble. So far, the outbreaks have been small – the most prominent team to have a game postponed was the Norte Dame, who had the Wake Forest game scheduled for last Saturday moved to December 12th after 8 players tested positive for Covid-19. Another 18 players have tested positive this week making the next game doubtful.
The NFL has also been lucky. There have been some terrific games played in the first 3 weeks of the season with no positive tests. That is, until this week; three players and five staffers of the Tennessee Titans have tested positive for the virus. Their camp has been shut down as has the Minnesota Viking camp, Tennessee’s opponent last Sunday.
We knew that there would be flare ups, and I admit that I have been enjoying the return of sports, especially hockey and baseball. We will see how I feel about football during a pandemic when Northwestern begins its Big Ten in a few weeks. I just there are no tragedies caused by short-sighted kids and parents, and greedy coaches, administrators and conference officials.

I know that this site is best known for griping – about athletes, about agents, and especially about leagues and owners, but I have to give the leagues some credit, in the midst of the pandemic, the NBA, has done a great job in playing through. Major League Baseball has done a good job overall with some issues, but the biggest surprise has to be how well the NHL has fared.
Many readers will be surprised reading that last sentence. Gary “The Count from Sesame Street” has been the most hated man in hockey to the fans. Beholden only to the owners, he has done very well for them, growing the league from a sport nearly dying into a multibillion dollar enterprise. Fans will never forgive him for the numerous labor stoppages especially the cancellation of the entire 2004-05 season, and the loss of 510 games (approximately the first half) of the 2012-13 season. Nor should hockey fans forget in my opinion. I know I won’t. I have to give credit where it’s due – this may have been the finest six months in Bettman’s tenure, and deserving of his being entered into the Hockey Hall of Fame someday. I have openly stated that Bettman’s NHL could screw-up a one car funeral, but I’m serious – let me explain…
Following the NBA, the NHL adopted the “bubble” concept – sequestering the participating players from all others, even family members in Toronto or Edmonton and held their play-in games and playoffs. We are four games into the Stanley Cup Finals. The level of play has been as high as ever, given lots of people something to break through the monotony of the pandemic, but most important, there has not been one positive Covid-19 test among the players, referees, staff, announcers, coaches, anybody. The NBA has the same track record I believe, but it’s amazing that the NHL actually got everyone to play by the rules. The fact that there hasn’t been one positive test among the thousands of tests taken during the tournament stretching over months is remarkable.
Where Bettman really shines (yes, it feel a bit sickening to type that) is that the league and the NHLPA announced the extension of the collective bargaining agreement that was scheduled to expire at the end of the 2021-22 season. Fans, players, agents, and many others were nervous about the new CBA. The expiring CBA was crafted in 2013 after the end of the lockout that cost the first half of that season, and every time a labor agreement is due to expire, both sides – the players and owners hunker down for a long, ugly negotiation. Everyone girded for another drawn out battle; instead the two sides negotiated an extension through the 2025-26 season.
With the league’s present and future taken care of, all that’s left is what form the 2020-2021 season takes. The pandemic has pushed everything back by months, but it looks like the NHL is preparing to start the new season around December and go from there. With a shortened offseason following an excellent playoffs, fans should remain excited about the sport and the league.
The positive state of the league is in no small part the work of the commissioner. Yeah, I’m shocked too…

I was asked by my friend Steve Bynum from WBEZ to speak about the passing of Hall of Fame Chicago Bear great Gale Sayers, and I felt it was important to follow up on that here.
It has been heartrending to see Mr. Sayers wheelchair bound, unable to speak, suffering from dementia. Visits to Soldier Field and the NFL 100th Anniversary celebrations were hard on those of us who remember watching the “Kansas Comet” shred opposing defenses and special team units. Even if you only saw him of grainy black and white television, you were riveted by his exploits. It seemed that he could change directions in mid-air; his legs appearing to separate from his upper body as defenders flew around him grasping only the air and some mud. No story can fail to mention that he was the youngest player even inducted to the Football Hall of Fame; that he only played 68 games before knee injuries ended his magical career.
In reading about his historic 6 touchdown performance against San Francisco in 1965 in which he scored 4 rushing TDs, 1 receiving and 1 returning, I was amazed by another stat. For his 4TDs on the ground, he only had 8 carries all day. As football fans are used to, we imagine a rusher getting a record after 25-30 carries in a game. He scored on 50% of his rushing attempts. Amazing.
What young people cannot imagine was the power of the ABC film “Brian’s Song.” In those days there were three major networks – CBS, NBC and ABC. The fact that ABC showed a film about two football players: one Black and one white, men who should have been rivals since they played the same position, became roommates, unheard of in the 1960s. The friendship in light of Sayers’ injuries and of Brian Piccolo’s cancer was heartwarming and fairly true. (One comedian said years ago that Brian’s Song and Old Yeller were the only films at which men were allowed to cry.) Sayers became a reluctant media figure, considering his noted shyness. Of course, having Billy Dee Williams and James Caan playing the men didn’t hurt.
In addition, he was a major force in his hometowns. He returned to the University of Kansas as Associate Athletic Director after retiring from the Bears. He was Athletic Director of Southern Illinois for many years, then returned to Chicago as a successful entrepreneur.
Even more important, as great an athlete as he was, he was a very nice human being. He supported and did lots of speaking engagements to young people. He was a tremendous I met him a few times including when he taped a couple of Back Table with Chet Coppock shows. He was an incredible person. As a runner, only Barry Sanders could compare; as a person, he was even better.
RIP