Tanking

I took a peek at the Bulls-Celtics’ game just before halftime last night, and hats off to Arturas Karnisovas, whose tank job is working according to plan. Karnisovas’s newly reconstructed team headed into the locker room trailing 72-44. Final score, Boston 124 Chicago 105. This gives Karnisovas just what he wants, a losing streak. Right now, it stands at six, four since the tanking decision was made. One problem, though. In all likelihood, it’s come too late. As late as January 31, the Bulls were within one game of .500, with a whole lot of other teams already in tank-mode. Right now, the Bulls’ record stands at 24-31, way too good to give them anything more than a Hail Mary of a chance to net the top choice in the draft. Why? Because there are five teams with fifteen or fewer wins and another two with nineteen or fewer. In all, nine teams have worse records than the Bulls. How many of them do you think will try to put together a win streak that hurts their draft chances? I mean, other than the Bulls?

Not So Fast

We’re in the extreme feel-good phase of spring training, before a single game has been played or the first injury reported. Off of yesterday, everybody is talking about the balls that new White Sox first baseman Munetaka Murakami launched during batting practice. Not so fast. Hitting soft-toss is no big thing; I seem to remember watching video of Luis Robert Jr. doing it just before or after he signed with the Sox in 2017. It doesn’t count until the pitcher is throwing hard from 60’ 6” and the batter is wearing a helmet. Until then, I’m satisfied with the regular contact.

Of or Like a Gladiator

On occasion, a sportscaster will let slip the comparison of an athlete to a gladiator. It isn’t true, of course, because athletes almost always get to see another day. But the metaphor works as an appeal to our dark sides. Long ago, ABC’s “Wide World of Sports” cleaned it up with the tagline of “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat” while showing clips of a skier and motorcycle driver wiping out bigtime. In baseball, nobody really watches to see a batter get hit the way Tony Conigliaro did. But in football and boxing, we sit there watching and knowing that the next hit or punch could be fatal. Whatever the sport, athletes know each appearance could be their last, due to injury or age or both. What goes unsaid but understood by athlete and audience adds to the draw of the game, the competition. Beware the blindside and the left hook. Some athletes take a pass on the gladiator gig. Warren Spahn knew when to hang it up; his body at the age of 44 told him, that and his release by the Giants. But Muhammad Ali kept stepping into the ring until it effectively killed him, or set into motion the bodily reactions to constant beatings that did. And now Lindsey Vonn is carried was airlifted off a slope in Italy. Rather than stay retired, Vonn tried a comeback at age 41. Unlike Warren Spahn, Vonn didn’t see herself as a coach or cattle rancher. Nor did she see an athlete diminished by age. Sunday, Vonn clipped a gate seconds into her run, possibly a result of the torn ACL she suffered nine days before. Pinwheels can be pretty, but not when skiers do them down a slope. Vonn reportedly will need multiple surgeries to repair a broken left leg. It’s not that Vonn made a right or wrong decision. It’s simply that she made a decision with consequences. The highest of accolades or a stretcher for a shield. The latter-day gladiator fell, a worldwide audience watched and reacted in a way that defined them as human beings.

Over

What to say about the Super Bowl LX, other than it’s over with the Seahawks hardly breaking a sweat against the Patriots? A 29-13 score does not exactly make for must-see TV, even with 30 of those points coming in the fourth quarter. If you’re a Bears’ fan, you have to come away thinking Caleb Williams could’ve done better than the Patriots’ Drake Maye (27-of-43, 295 yards, two touchdown and two interceptions, one a pick-six). Williams went number-one in the 2024 draft, with Maye two picks behind. Given my overall lukewarm Bear fandom, it says something that I think Williams has a higher ceiling than Maye. The whole game was so underwhelming I couldn’t help shake the feeling neither the Seahawks nor Patriots will go far in the postseason next year; we’ll see. Thank heaven Clare had good food and my grandchildren were happy to see me.

No Kidding

Tribune architecture critic Edward Keegan used his column today to rip the various stadium proposals the Bears have generated here, there and in Indiana. If only words mattered. As for the three Gary sites, Keegan found “there’s no there there,” with officials “proposing a series of soulless and placeless places.” No kidding. Keegan went on to ask “whether architecture or urban design is even part of the equation that the Bears are considering. The schemes we’ve seen so far for the stadium itself—and this includes Arlington Heights and the area adjacent to Soldier Field—are placeless and unlikely to change much regardless of the site eventually chosen.” That could be why so many of the site illustrations show buildings as geometric shapes devoid of detail. A very long time ago, Chicago architect Louis Sullivan argued that a building’s design must adhere to the idea that “form ever follows function. This is the law.” In which case, the new Bears stadium complex should be in the form of a giant cash register.

Lucky Him

Bulls’ chief exec Arturas Karnisovas indicated this week that’s he checked with Jerry Reinsdorf and his son Michael, and they approve of his decision to pursue a non-rebuild rebuild. Lucky him. I don’t know about the younger Reinsdorf, but his dad asks only for loyalty, along with healthy doses of owner-worship. Just look at Kenny Williams, who got to be real or de facto GM for just under a quarter of a century. Five years in, he won a World Series, and then nothing. It took a historically bad team with 121 losses before Jerry Reinsdorf would fire Williams and “Is he the GM or not?” Rick Hahn in late August of 2024. Now, consider Larry Himes, who served as Sox GM from 1986 to 1990. In that short time, Himes drafted the likes of Alex Fernandez; Jack McDowell; Frank Thomas; and Robin Ventura while trading for Lance Johnson; Tim Raines; Sammy Sosa; and Wilson Alvarez. Himes also hired Jeff Torborg as manager. But Himes was bad at owner-worship and had a short run on the South Side. I could bring up Jerry Krause, only it would hurt too much.

Sonny Jurgensen

According to the NYT, former Washington Redskins’ quarterback Sonny Jurgensen died today at the age of 91. How I loved to watch Jurgensen play. Growing up a White Sox fan, I didn’t care much about a team like the Dodgers. They had pitching, we had pitching. No, it was the hitting teams that drew me, the Braves and Red Sox in particular. Oh, for a Mack Jones or a Tony Conigliaro or… It was the same thing with the Bears. This is a franchise over a century old that’s had maybe five quarterbacks of note. George Halas got ticked at Mike Ditka for wanting a raise, so he traded him in 1967 for a quarterback. Jurgensen with his laser arm? Are you kidding? Halas thought more along the lines of Jack Concannon. Jurgensen was traded from the Eagles to the Redskins for Norm Snead and Claude Crabb three years earlier, in case you were wondering. Watching Jurgensen play was a rare treat for anyone in Chicago; it was a different time, different broadcast priorities. Jurgensen threw 255 touchdown in his career, of which maybe I saw ten on TV. That’s where Strat-O-Matic came in. The game of games, which allowed me to play the likes of Jones and Conigliaro every summer, came out with a football version in 1967. I filled the air with passes from Jurgensen to Charley Taylor and Bobby Mitchell and Jerry Smith while mixing in the occasional run by A.D. Whitfield; never did a board game levitate above the table more than when I played Sonny Jurgensen in Strat-O football. George Halas wouldn’t know a quarterback if…