In the Shadow of Bears

It’s September in Chicago, and any baseball team that isn’t in contention had better face facts—it’s football time.  The White Sox will be lucky to get any coverage between now and the end of the season.  I’m amazed the box score from yesterday’s 6-1 loss to the Red Sox even made its way into both papers.

I’m doubly amazed because the Bears pulled off a big trade Saturday that brought them outside linebacker Khalil Mack from the Oakland-soon-to-be-Las-Vegas Raider.  If the papers are to be believed (and remember, it’s the Bears), GM Ryan Pace has pulled off a one heck of a steal.  He definitely put the spotlight on his team.

(Here’s a story that won’t get much coverage in these parts—how the trade affects the Raiders, their move to Las Vegas, to be exact.  All sorts of promises (and about $750 million in public funding) had to be made to lure the Raiders away from Oakland.  I’d be willing to bet—pardon the pun—advocates painted the Raiders as a young team on the rise; Mack, for example, is only 27.  But the Raiders couldn’t or wouldn’t sign their star defender to an extension, so they traded him.  That’s not exactly the kind of franchise I’d want to welcome to my town.)

Professional sports in Chicago is a little like a jungle, or maybe the Galapagos Islands because of where this metaphor is going.  The strong survive to eat up coverage, the weak fall to the back pages or get twenty seconds of air time.  I doubt Charles Darwin was much of a White Sox fan.  Heaven knows it’s hard.